PORSCHE INFORMATIK ACCELERATES BUSINESS PRODUCTIVITY WITH WAN OPTIMIZATION FROM EXPAND

Expand Networks, (www.expand.com) the leader in WAN optimization for branch office consolidation and virtualization, today announced that Porsche Informatik, a division of Porsche Holding Austria, has implemented its advanced WAN optimization technology. The solution is accelerating and prioritizing critical business applications between its headquarters in Salzburg, and its subsidiaries, corporate customers and dealerships across 16 European countries. Successfully enhancing user experience and increasing business productivity, the $550,000 project is set to pay for itself in just 18 months and could deliver up to $700,000 in cost saving over three years.

Porsche Informatik relies on its WAN for running critical business processes such as vehicle ordering, order tracking, delivery and customer financing. Robert Singer, project leader for the Expand rollout at Porsche Informatik, comments:

"Fast and reliable communication between our importers, dealerships and headquarters is critical for a streamlined supply chain. However, we found our existing bandwidth provision struggling to cope with the demand for applications and data travelling over the WAN. Lotus Notes and SAP, critical for ensuring accurate and up to date financial data, were particularly problematic; regularly saturating the network at peak times. With limited bandwidth available in many of our locations, we set about evaluating optimization solutions in order to reduce congestion over our WAN links and get more out of the network."

Having installed Juniper's WAN Optimization (previously Peribit) in 2004, Porsche Informatik found the ever increasing demands on the network outstripped the benefits the solution provided, resulting in a continuously degrading network performance across its distributed environments. The company chose to replace the legacy Juniper solution with Expand Networks following a thorough evaluation of the WAN optimization market, which included Riverbed, BlueCoat and Cisco WAAS.

Singer continues: "What Expand offered us was a way to increase traffic on our WAN links in the most cost effective manner. We quickly decided that Expand's superior byte-level caching techniques and ability to deliver a rapid ROI proved the best solution from a technological and cost perspective."

Porsche has completed the implementation of Expand Accelerators across 120 sites, with 40 more to follow before March 2011. The company also implemented ExpandView, Expand's centralized management platform, at its Headquarters. According to Singer, this sped up the roll-out significantly, "By using ExpandView, we were able to pre-configure all of the Accelerators centrally. It was practically plug and play, which saved us both time and money and enabled us to experience the benefits almost immediately."

Now in place, the compression capabilities of Expand have delivered significant increases in bandwidth, helping to manage peaks in demand and protect business critical applications from congestion, whilst its byte level caching techniques have reduced repetitive traffic flowing through the network. Singer comments:

"Users have responded positively to the Expand solution, stating that key applications were running at greater speed and their corresponding output had increased dramatically. The acceleration techniques of Expand have helped overcome the latency we were previously experiencing - Lotus Notes has seen a 400% (best value) increase in performance, and SAP over 800% (best value). As we extend our operations across Eastern Europe and other regions, the solutions' ability to grow with us, and its ease of use and configuration, will be a huge benefit moving forward."

Christian Honore, Vice President of Sales EMEA at Expand Networks, concludes: "The Accelerators area designed to increase the efficiency of an enterprise's network without increasing overall IT costs. This enables large organizations like Porsche Informatik to quickly and easily extend the capacity of their networks, improving the user's network experience and productivity, and ultimately improving the overall response to customers."