Gartner believes that Microsoft's tie-up with Citrix will change the selling dynamic for WAN optimization controllers, branch office boxes and, to a lesser degree, application delivery controllers.

However, the analyst firm went on to predict that the Microsoft/Citrix partnership will face "some challenges" as the published product delivery date is "very aggressive."

Microsoft's recent alliance with Citrix Systems to develop wide area network (WAN) optimization technology represents a declaration of war on Cisco in the "critical battleground" of the branch office, Gartner has reported.

"Microsoft clearly considers Cisco a significant threat to its dominance in the enterprise software market, and views the branch office as a critical battleground for application and network architectures," stated a Gartner spokesman.

"Cisco and Microsoft have avoided direct competition until recently, but the merging of networking, security storage and applications made this confrontation inevitable.

"Microsoft is launching new networking capabilities within Vista and the 'Longhorn' version of Windows Server, and is pursuing partners in the voice arena, for example Nortel."

Gartner believes that Microsoft's tie-up with Citrix will change the selling dynamic for WAN optimization controllers, branch office boxes and, to a lesser degree, application delivery controllers.

"Because Cisco will not be the default choice, we believe its influence is likely to weaken. In addition, sales cycles will are likely to lengthen, and smaller vendors will find selling tougher," Gartner stated.

However, the analyst firm went on to predict that the Microsoft/Citrix partnership will face "some challenges" as the published product delivery date is "very aggressive."

Given these concerns, it advises firms to continue their existing business-critical WAN optimization implementations because its estimates that the Microsoft/Citrix product is 18 months away.