What Is Application Delivery?

Application delivery is the process of bringing applications to end users reliably and at scale while maintaining performance and functionality. Organizations typically deploy applications on cloud servers that end users can access via the internet using browsers or other client devices. Popular applications may have millions of users accessing them simultaneously. Application delivery technologies ensure that all end users have a consistent application experience irrespective of their geographical location or time of access. Changes to application functionality, resource availability, and resource utilization are all managed carefully so user workflows are not impacted, even during peak usage hours.

Application delivery allows businesses to deploy and manage applications across different environments.

Enhanced user experience

Effective application delivery provides users a consistent experience across different geographical locations through content delivery networks (CDNs) and optimized routing strategies. These technologies ensure that users receive data from the nearest server, reducing latency and improving overall application responsiveness. Fast delivery of applications increases productivity.

Increased reliability

An application delivery solution employs failover mechanisms, traffic management, and redundancy checks to provide high availability. In the event of a server failure or other issues, the application remains available to users through backup systems. Additionally, these systems play a critical role in disaster recovery, helping organizations quickly restore services in case of major disruptions. Organizations can minimize application downtime and keep applications accessible to users at all times.

High performance at scale

When pairing application delivery with other technologies, like cloud computing or containerization, it can offer a high degree of scalability. Through load balancing and other techniques, well-planned application delivery systems distribute the workload across multiple servers. This ensures that the application remains responsive and fast, regardless of the number of concurrent users. You can scale access to applications to adapt to changing demands and usage patterns.

Flexible management

Application delivery solutions offer centralized management systems and monitoring tools that provide insight into usage and user behavior. Administrators can dynamically allocate resources based on demand, ensuring that server capacity is used effectively. You can reduce operational costs by avoiding over-provisioning of resources. Organizations can also deploy new features, bug fixes, and performance improvements while limiting application downtime. Applications remain adaptable and can meet new emerging needs.

Businesses should consider the following aspects when engaging in the application delivery process.

Network infrastructure

A robust network infrastructure is vital for successful application delivery. Ensuring you have sufficient bandwidth, efficient routing mechanisms, and low latency will allow you to accommodate user demands without compromising user experience or performance.

Monitoring

It is important to have monitoring tools to effectively track application performance, system health, and user behavior. You can use real-time monitoring to identify performance issues as they arise, optimize resource allocation, and implement strategies to improve the uptime of an application.

The application delivery process uses a range of strategies to ensure stable performance. For example, caching, different content delivery strategies, and load balancing reduce server overloads.

Security

Typically, an application uses a range of robust security measures to protect against potential cyber threats. For example, businesses may deploy encryption, intrusion detection systems, firewalls, and access controls to manage the security of their application. A baseline security level is required to meet regulatory and compliance demands in all industries.

Software ownership

The term application delivery can have two meanings depending on the context of its use. Firstly, organizations develop and host applications for customers to utilize. The second type of application delivery solution is when a business licenses an application from a third-party vendor and then provides remote access to its employees to deliver the licensed applications to them. End users can access web and cloud applications from a browser or client device in both cases. However, some technical considerations vary.

Application delivery management uses a range of key technologies to deliver applications reliably.

Application delivery controller

An application delivery controller (ADC) handles load-balancing traffic across different servers. Load balancing ensures an application can offer high performance and availability. An ADC directs oncoming web request traffic to free data sources to prevent servers from experiencing excessive load. Modern application delivery controllers can also help to validate a user’s identity to improve the overall security of applications. You can typically locate an ADC between the application server and the firewall. Cloud-based technologies typically combine load balancing for the network and application layers into a single, fully managed service.

Application delivery network

An application delivery network (ADN), or content delivery network (CDN), optimizes the delivery of applications and minimizes content delivery time. ADNs allow organizations to accelerate load times to streamline the application delivery process. ADNs use application delivery controllers and WAN optimization controllers to accelerate application delivery to end users. Modern cloud-based CDNs can deliver static and dynamic data from a single, fully managed service.

Application streaming is a way to improve application delivery to internal users and employees. It is where a business hosts applications within its enterprise environment. End users with access to this environment can install applications on their local devices or access them through their web browser. In application delivery, users interact with applications on their local machine via a network connection to the enterprise environment. This style of application delivery requires lots of storage space on the user’s device.

In contrast, application streaming allows end users to access applications on demand. The application is stored on remote servers, and users work on the remote systems without downloading any data to their personal devices. In application streaming, the end user only accesses the necessary components. It requires less processing power and less local storage but needs a stable internet connection to stream the application.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers several services that help distribute applications from cloud environments and fulfill your client requests. Access leading application delivery services that can help transmit user-facing data and easily stream SaaS applications for remote workers. For example, you can:

• Access secure and reliable application streaming and low-cost virtual desktop services with Amazon AppStream 2.0.
• Get started with elastic load balancing and manage advanced requests with Amazon Elastic Load Balancing.
• Transmit user-facing data securely and with improved latency worldwide with edge networking services on AWS.

Get started with application delivery on AWS by creating a free account today.