Expand Networks (News - Alert), a world leader in WAN optimization as a service solutions, has been selected by brand management company INTERSPORT International to help optimize its many critical applications between its Switzerland and China offices.
With the implementation of Expand Networks’ Virtual Accelerator (VACC), INTERSPORT has already achieved 35 percent acceleration in its SAP (News - Alert), video conferencing and applications processes during the initial test phase. With this accomplishment, INTERSPORT will bring this solution to its Hong Kong headquarters for a more optimized virtual environment.
Following an inability to effectively deliver information on brands, suppliers, purchasing and market rates to the FMCG, INTERSPORT’s 5,300 associated retailers called for a solution that would meet and solve the company’s network and application performance challenges.
“Connectivity in China was not stable, and we were experiencing inconsistent network performance for overseas bandwidth,” said Jicky Li, network manager at INTERSPORT. “This impacted productivity, and slowed critical communication between our international offices. This was particularly prevalent with SAP, but also other data traffic such as file-sharing and e-mail communications.”
Video conferencing, a method widely used by INTERSPORT to internally communicate with larger brands like Nike, also faced obstacles in terms of WAN performance. While INTERSPORT evaluated other WAN optimization as a service offerings from companies like Juniper, Riverbed (News - Alert) and F5, Expand Networks’ ability to accelerate and prioritize applications remained unmatched.
“Having made an investment into creating a wholly virtualized environment at INTERSPORT, it was critical that any new software must fully support VMWare in order to match the virtual network,” Li added. “Expand was the only product to provide this.”
The combination of INTERSPORTs’ existing virtual infrastructure with Expand Networks’ Virtual Accelerators has ultimately resulted in a future-focused technology that accelerates and ensures wide-area network traffic performance.
“After we installed Expand, traffic was smooth and user experience consistent,” Li said. “The virtualized system in China now runs like a LAN. Expand has also made a difference to senior execs, regularly traveling between international offices. For them, connecting to the Exchange Server in our Swiss headquarters was difficult and slow, but with Expand’s compression techniques, this pain point has been eliminated.”
Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Tammy Wolf