In 2003 Netli created their Application Delivery Network (ADN). This is considered by many to be the earliest "cloud-based WAN optimization" service. Now, "The Cloud" is a household word, and is being used as a platform for many business-critical services.
In the performance management arena, new tools and approaches have been and are being developed to address this rapidly-growing market. Netli has since become Akamai, and other cloud providers have appeared on the scene including Internap, Cloud Leverage, Virtela, and Aryaka.
One could rightly draw the conclusion that there is a solid presence for WAN-based traffic optimization, that it is becoming more and more mature, and that it is a natural extension to virtualize your key business applications. Why then wouldn't you virtualize application performance management as well? Tools are available that measure performance of virtualized business services, and now tools such as Ixia's IxVM suite place the tool frameworks themselves in the virtual environment. The advantages include better integration for verification of policy enforcement, VMAN trunking performance, port mirroring, and more.
Here is the question I would like to pose to the enterprise CIO: If you are investing in the migration of your crucial business applications to the cloud, then how do you best insure a successful outcome? Testing of key business applications, the infrastructure that they run on, and the devices that connect that infrastructure is a mature science. Now, we need to increase that sphere to include testing in the cloud as well!