Satellite Technology Feature Article
December 01, 2008
Wingspan to Improve Network Communications with Expand Network's WAN Solutions
By Anita B., TMCnet Contributor
Expand Networks, a provider of application acceleration solutions over the Wide Area Network (WAN) is helping Wingspan Care Group, a non-profit company, to improve its overall communication and user experience.
According to the company, Expand was chosen over Riverbed (News - Alert) and Packeteer (now Blue Coat), two other WAN Optimization providers, as it performed substantially better in tests.
Expand has a positive track record in assisting other non-profit companies with improving their communications across the WAN
This news comes on the heels of an announcement that Expand Networks (News - Alert) was deployed by Antarctica NZ, for developing, managing and executing the New Zealand Government interests in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, for WAN optimization technology over satellite communications.
“Given today’s economy, working for a not-for-profit organization has never been more challenging,” said Mark Blados, Network Manager, Wingspan Care Group. “We epitomize doing more with less every day, while still trying to assist our clients as quickly, efficiently, and thoroughly as possible. We needed a solution that could grow as we did, and one that could be easily deployed and managed remotely.”
Expand's Application Acceleration solution is a collection of application-specific enhancements that improve response time. Expand's Citrix Acceleration has been a staple for many years, enabling more user sessions per remote location as well as speeding the response time across the board.
“We run a very tight IT organization, both in terms of monetary and people resources. Expand’s solution is very scalable while being truly cost-effective. I only pay for the features I use,” said Blados.
By identifying other organizations that can benefit from its offerings, Wingspan has expanded its holdings and most recently acquired Applewood Centers to improve application performance at branch locations and main campus site and enable scalability as the company grows as well as a solution that could provide a return-on-investment (ROI) in less than a year.
Wingspan was able to decrease its bandwidth utilization with Expand Networks Accelerators and as a result has cut down usage by half and reports that used to take remote offices 16 minutes to create are now created in 4 minutes since remote employees can more quickly open files shared on the network.
As a result, everyone – office-based, network connected, remote office workers and mobile employees can be more productive and have the tools they need to more effectively help others in the community.
Anita B (News - Alert). is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anita's articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi
