Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) is a software- and hardware-integrated, WAN optimization and application acceleration solution, and part of Cisco Intelligent WAN (IWAN). Cisco WAAS reduces latency and optimizes bandwidth. (4:46 min). Cisco WAAS provides an elastic "scale as you grow" enterprise-wide deployment model with Cisco AppNav and industry-leading scalability for secure acceleration of email, file, web, software-as-a-service (SaaS), video, and VDI applications. Cisco IWAN with Akamai Connect optimizes web and mobile applications by extending the Akamai Intelligent Platform directly into the branch.
As of August 2025, the mindshare of WAAS in the WAN Optimization category
stands at 4.2%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
