This is a somewhat interesting discussion.  The software vendors say that you absolutely need a software solution to speed applications.  The hardware vendors say that you absolutely need hardware to speed applications.

App developers are apparently not very good at writing fast code.  That seems to be why we need these tools.  App teams blame network teams.  Maybe we should all work together to provide a solid end user experience.  Cisco says that this is purely hardware and network based as an issue.  The application aware network can optimize itself.

Simple, transparent, no one size fits all solution.