Cisco WAAS accelerates applications and data, allowing customers to consolidate application, file, and print servers from their branch offices for easier management, improved backup, and lower cost. WAAS accelerates the performance of any TCP-based application across the WAN, including data protection, database, e-mail, remote desktop, and Web-based applications, as well as accelerating file and print services. Cisco WAAS includes best-in-class application acceleration and WAN optimization techniques such as compression, redundancy elimination, transport optimizations, caching, and content distribution, thus overcoming the limitations of TCP/IP and popular application protocols.