• What is Aptimize?
• What are the requirements?
• We use a CDN already, can Aptimize help?
• Aptimize Vs Akamai
• Aptimize Vs Riverbed
• Why is it better than just developing my own solution?
• My website is highly customized. Can I use Aptimize?
• I'm not technical, can I use Aptimize?
• Can I trial first?

What is Aptimize?

Aptimize Website Accelerator (WAX) is an ISAPI filter for Microsoft IIS, or a Daemon module for Linux Apache. It automates performance tuning by dynamically optimizing web pages for performance at runtime – just before a page is sent from web server to browser.

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What are the requirements?

Windows:

Supported websites: Microsoft SharePoint 2003/2007/2010. Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0+, ASP Classic, DotNetNuke, or any Microsoft IIS based intranet or website. e.g. EPiServer, DotNetNuke, Sitefinity.

IIS versions: 6, 7 and 7.5

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2003 Server, Microsoft Windows 2008 Server, Microsoft Windows Vista or Microsoft Windows 7.

Hardware specifications: x86 or x64 processor 1GHz or better, 256MB free memory, 100MB free disk space.

Server environment: Supports both single server and load balanced server environments.

SSL support: Supports SSL and non-SSL web pages.

 

Linux Apache

Supported websites: Static HTML, PHP, e.g. Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, SilverStripe, Invision Power Board, Liferay, Magento.

Apache versions: 2.0 and above

Operating System: Debian 4+, CentOS 5+, Ubuntu 7.04+, RHEL 5+, Glibc 2.5+, Fedora 5+.

Hardware specifications: 32/64 bit supported, 256MB RAM, 100MB free disk space.

Server environment: Supports both single server and load balanced environments on a per-VirtualHost basis.

SSL support: Supports SSL & non-SSL web pages.

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We use a CDN already, can Aptimize help?

Yes. Aptimize improves Content Delivery Networks (CDN) performance.  A CDN accelerates a web application by optimizing network connections, and caching web page resources closer to the end user.

Website Accelerator makes it easy to leverage a Content Delivery Network (CDN) by rewriting the URL for selected content to another hostname. This can be done automatically for all resources or selected resources, meaning you can use a CDN to host the content you want without having to make code or content changes. If your CDN host proxies your origin server, then all optimized resource sets created by Aptimize will also be served from the network edge, giving a double boost!

If you already have a CDN, the Website Accelerator will ensure that the content is served with the optimal compression and caching techniques to reduce traffic charges. Other customers have reduced their traffic volume by as much as 70% when using the Website Accelerator on their CDN enabled site!

This feature can also be used to achieve domain sharding, where the origin server hosts some resources that are accessed using a different hostname to the primary site address – all without changing a single line of code.

Aptimize complements and improves performance on top of any improvements from a CDN, delivering the following capabilities:

• Reduction in data traffic costs: Aptimize shrinks and compresses resources, and increases client-side caching, reducing CDN data traffic costs significantly
• Speed improvements. Page load times are reduced by merging the page JS, CSS and image resources into fewer files
• Optimization of external resources. Most CDNs do not accelerate resources referenced from external sites (like images and analytics scripts). Aptimize can automatically cache these resources locally and include them for CDN acceleration.
• Optimize HTML for faster rendering. Aptimize reorders page resources in the HTML for the fastest render times
• Versioning issues solved. Many CDNs perform only periodic version checking – meaning pages can be served with out-of-date resources.  Aptimize actively detects version changes and ensures pages stay up-to-date, with a unique auto-URL versioning mechanism and aggressive caching of resources on the browser.

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Aptimize Vs Akamai

Traditionally companies have looked to a Content Delivery Network (CDN) such as Akamai to provide efficient delivery of content through providing use of their massive server farms that are located close to the end users. 

A CDN has its place, but by itself is a brute force approach that only provides part of the answer to accelerating webpage load times. A CDN does not address optimizing content. Aptimize uses complex acceleration algorithms that CDN’s do not. For example Aptimize:

• optimizes content for specific browsers and browser versions
• merges files/resources
• reduces HTTP requests on a page
• handles optimization & acceleration of dynamically changing content

Aptimize' powerful acceleration engine - the Website Accelerator - can manage the publishing of content from a website to a CDN, reducing data charges and further accelerating the website or intranet.

 

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Aptimize Vs Riverbed

Aptimize frequently sees Riverbed in competition for SharePoint intranet acceleration sales. Riverbed requires hardware or software appliances located at the head office and branch offices to accelerate SharePoint.

Riverbed is an effective accelerator for file transfers but provides poor acceleration for pages.  Aptimize provides full site acceleration with a single installation and does not require the deployment of hardware at each end point.

 

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Why is it better than just developing my own solution?

1. There are many desktop and mobile browsers each with its own set of features and behaviours, in multiple versions - it's a challenge to simply get your web pages running correctly on these. Trying to optimize for each of these platforms is a complicated undertaking that typically requires time consuming Quality Assurance.
   Aptimize automatically recognizes browser types and optimizes page resources for you without impacting the functionality of the page.
2. Websites are made up of hundreds or even thousands of pages, the scale of the optimization task can be daunting; many developers end up optimizing the homepage and some main landing pages.
   Aptimize optimizes the entire site - automatically.
3. Implementing an efficient caching strategy for your pages can be difficult, you run the risk of serving stale data.
   Aptimize implements an optimal caching strategy with no risk that a visitor will see out of date information.
4. 'By hand' optimization to existing code does not add new features, and worse, it may add bugs to previously working code.
5. 'By hand' optimization invariably sacrifices maintainability for speed. Pursuing performance tweaks makes your website is harder to maintain when you next need to change some of the content.  
6. The only constant about the web is that it keeps changing, you can spend time optimizing your web pages or you can spend time building features and keeping your web presence up to date.

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My website is highly customized. Can I use Aptimize?

Yes, most of our customer websites are highly customized. Our experienced web performance engineers will work closely with you to ensure the optimal setup for your environment.

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I'm not technical, can I use Aptimize?

Yes! We help you install Aptimize and configure it so it suits your unique settings. We don't expect you to go it alone. However...you must have server administrator access to the web server your website is hosted on and your website must meet requirements.

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Can I trial first?

Yes. Request a trial.

The trial is fully functional. In trial mode the Aptimize watermark will appear in the top left of the screen. Once a license key is purchased and entered our watermark will disappear. Most customers trial on their pre-production/testing server.

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