10 x 10 = 11

More is more... up to a certain extend. For example, let's have a look to Application Acceleration over the WAN. When you listen to vendors' marketing, it is up to the one that promise the largest possible acceleration (or data reduction) factor: x10, x100, x1000... Who wants more?

Now, back to the reality and consider Mark, an ACME enterprise's employee that works in a branch office, and uses an application which server is hosted in a remote datacenter. Before application acceleration, Mark used to wait 100 sec for the transaction to be completed(I know, this is quite long but it simplifies the discussion).

Deploying vendor Y's technology, Mark gets x10 acceleration factor: now, the waiting time is of 10 seconds, which is far better: the saving is of 90 seconds for each transaction.

Vendor Z comes to Mark's enterprise IT organization and commits to get x100 acceleration factor: 10 times better that Y! What a deal, indeed. After installation, the promise is fulfilled: transaction time goes from 10 seconds down to 1 second: the saving is of 99 seconds per Mark's transaction compared to the initial situation - 10 times better leads to 10% improvement!

I'm not arguing that 100 is not better than 10, but up to which extend, and at which price?

(I let you make the case for vendor W, that is sure to obtain x1000 acceleration factor).