Expand Networks http://www.expand.com, the leader in optimising WANs for branch office consolidation and virtualisation, today unveiled an update to its operating system that dramatically increases the ability for IT managers to identify, manage and control applications traversing the enterprise WAN, all from within a single, integrated WAN optimisation platform.
Expand's automatic Layer 7 application discovery QOS engine provides unprecedented levels of visibility and control over a comprehensive list of 400 plus applications, giving enterprises a granular and detailed view of applications to enable greater WAN provisioning capabilities. Expand has also announced Firewall Transparency Mode (FTM), which can seamlessly provide security friendly optimised WANs even in the most complicated environments.
Roquette Group is one of the world's major providers of starch and its derivatives, and can attest to the capabilities of the enhanced QOS and FTM from Expand. According to Frederic Facon, Technical Research Architect at Roquette Group: “The Layer 7 QOS engine delivers better visibility and control over applications on the WAN and as a result has improved optimisation, as well as network ROI. In addition, the Firewall Transparency Mode simplified installation by allowing us to optimise traffic across the MPLS WAN and VPN over Internet in UDP flows.”
The key elements of Expand's extensive bi-directional QOS are:
* Fully application-aware, auto-recognising over 400 applications and uniquely peer-to-peer traffic such as bitTorrent and eDonkey and Instant Messaging applications from Skype, MSN, Yahoo and AOL.
* Fully integrated in a single appliance, allowing interaction with WAN optimisation technology, including compression and byte level caching.
* Provides visibility into application type to enable enterprises to prioritise business-critical revenue generating applications, controlling less important applications and restricting rogue and greedy applications.
* Ability to control additional virtual bandwidth delivered by WAN optimisation to ensure greater ROI on the existing infrastructure.
“WAN optimisation delivers improved application response times and network capacity, but if that extra capacity is not being controlled it can cause bad traffic to be optimised with a detrimental effect on the performance of the organisation's most important applications,” said Efi Gatmor, CTO, Expand Networks. “Expand has always believed monitoring and control is a fundamental part of WAN optimisation. This has led us to enhance our existing QOS engine with improved Layer 7 visibility to enable greater control of the optimised WAN to ensure business-critical, time-sensitive applications are able to drive revenue unimpeded.”
Another new feature within the 6.1.3 code is Firewall Transparency Mode (FTM). To remain secure and guarantee the protection of critical assets, enterprises are deploying ever more advanced firewalls, which cripple the ability of WAN optimisation solutions to perform. Expand's FTM overcomes this challenge by:
* Being completely transparent and compatible with firewalls and intrusion detection systems for ease of deployment.
* Giving organisations the ability to flexibly decide how to encapsulate optimised traffic across the WAN in UDP, IPCOMP, RTM or IPSec.
* Providing fully featured WAN optimisation across deep packet inspected networks.
“The Expand FTM can overcome any firewall ensuring Expand integrates as transparently as possible, enabling enterprises to achieve all the benefits of WAN optimisation technology and deliver a superior end-user experience by putting users in virtual proximity of application and data centre services,” continued Efi Gatmor.
In addition, Expand has also launched its 6850/6950 data centre accelerators, which have multiple optimisation services on one appliance and have been designed to address the demands of today's data centres with greater levels of performance and redundancy.
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Expand Networks
Expand Networks is the pioneer and leader in the WAN optimisation market and is positioned by Gartner in the 'Leaders' quadrant in its Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimisation Controllers, 2007[i]. Expand helps organisations simplify their IT infrastructure while delivering remote offices fast, reliable and secure access to networked applications. This results in improved user productivity and cost-effective IT management. Expand offers a multi-service integrated platform that ensures superior performance for any application over any network. From its headquarters in Roseland, New Jersey and its global locations, Expand Networks (www.expand.com) serves more than 3 500 enterprise and public sector customers in over 100 countries, including: American Express, Bacardi USA, BMW, Continental Airlines, Carr America, Colgate, Elizabeth Arden, Reed Exhibitions, Target and United States Department of Defence, with over 40 000 units deployed and over 2 000 MS Terminal Services and Citrix customers. Expand is the largest supplier of WAN optimisation products to US government and military agencies (greater than 6 000 units) and also has the most units deployed at a single corporate location (4 500).
Expand Networks, Accelerator, Expand Compass, ExpandView are trademarks of Expand Networks. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
1 Gartner Research “Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimisation Controllers 2007” by Andy Rolfe and Joe Skorupa. Published December 14, 2007. Report ID Number G00153256
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