(ME Newswire): Expand Networks,the leader in optimizing WANs for branch office consolidation and virtualization, today announced that NWPG , The Northwest Provincial Government of South Africa, has chosen Expand Networks’ WAN Optimization technology to accelerate the delivery of its business applications across its dispersed workforce. Optimizing the government’s network and services with minimum financial outlay, the WAN Optimization project has already generated significant cost savings of over $700,000.
Serving many rural areas in the province, NWPG is restricted to working with very limited bandwidth, as Eloff Scholtz, Technical Advisor at NWPG explains, “Response times for applications were very bad. Committed to delivering the highest levels of service to our citizens, poor network performance was not an option. We needed to mitigate the latency and congestion we experienced over the network and required a technology solution that was both technically and economically efficient.?
NWPG looked to WAN Optimization technology capable of increasing its existing bandwidth without costly upgrades from network providers. Chris Silva, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, Inc., adds in his January 2009 report titled Inquiry Spotlight: WAN Optimization, Q1 2009, “Whether it be new content delivery networks, mission-critical network-dependent apps, or mobile user and branch office traffic, networks can quickly become overloaded, halting productivity. In an economic climate where boosting WAN capacity isn't feasible, WAN optimization is an increasingly attractive solution for enterprises searching to alleviate network stress and balance traffic.?
Testing products including Riverbed, Expand Networks and Juniper, according to Scholtz, Expand was the best option so far as price and performance was concerned, “The price performance ratio of Expand was clearly superior with a RoI of one year. On top of this, Expand Networks demonstrated technology maturity, and in the disciplines we were looking to focus upon, led by a long way.?
NWPG has completed the implementation of Expand Networks Accelerators across 100 of its 300 sites. The Accelerators are using low latency, byte level caching techniques that work on all applications to consistently deliver average bandwidth increases between 100 per cent and 400 percent for the organization. Expand's automatic Layer 7 application discovery Quality of Service (QoS) enforcement also ensures that NWPG’s applications run unimpeded on the WAN.
With the initial phase of the project a success, NWPG is planning to expand the roll-out of the Accelerator’s to the remaining sites in the near future. According to Scholtz, large gains in performance have been immediately visible and the project has enabled the organization to stretch its IT budget, “By using the Accelerators, the capacity of an entry level line from our network provider has tripled. With Expands ability to provide us with virtual bandwidth, we have saved a lot of money that can now be reinvested for other purposes across the province.?
Adam Davison, Corporate VP Expand Networks, concludes, “Through delivering virtual bandwidth, the Expand Accelerators have enabled NWPG to take its limited WAN and create massive increases in throughput without adding ongoing cost and complexity. NWPG has seen firsthand the extended returns on network investments that our technology can bring, stretching limited resources further and generating significant cash-savings that can make a tangible difference to the organization’s success and development.?