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Expand Networks' Mobile Accelerator Client Delivers Industry First Appliance-like PerformanceLAS VEGAS --(Business Wire)-- Expand Networks www.expand.com, the leader in optimizing WANs for branch office consolidation and virtualisation, today announces its new Mobile Accelerator Client (MACC) with unique ‘HIVE Technology'. The MACC, featuring technology from recently acquired Adelaide-based NetPriva PTY, transforms the economics of WAN Optimisation for smaller branch offices and mobile workers within large businesses. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is significantly reduced, and the requirement for a whole class of ‘conventional' optimisation hardware for small branch offices is removed - whilst delivering uncompromising appliance-like performance. "Networks have long been designed, built and operated independently of the applications that run on top of them. However, emerging technologies are changing this relationship," said Joe Skorupa, Research VP, Enterprise Networks, Gartner Inc. "Enterprises must deal with the conflicting requirements for increasing application demands within the constraints of tight budgets and a market with more technologies, deployment options and vendors. Application acceleration technologies to optimise datacentre network and WAN architectures are rapidly becoming mainstream." The MACC client introduces a number of technology and economic firsts. Of primary importance is Collective Mode, where MACC clients in the same location automatically discover each other and collaborate to create a high performance, distributed virtual cache and cooperative QoS. For organisations with small branch offices, this unique Collective Mode mitigates the requirement for WAN Optimisation appliances at the branch site, recouping the cost of a whole tier of capital expenditure - without compromising performance. "We've calculated that a typical enterprise of certain configurations could readily enjoy savings of up to 66% or more in capital and operating expenditure," said Adam Davison, Corporate Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Expand. Collective Mode is one of three modes of behaviour determined automatically by Intelligent Location Detection - a cornerstone of the new HIVE Technology - whereby the client intelligently understands its location and automatically applies policies and adaptive QoS and configuration based on this information. The economics of the MACC are equally innovative and unique. First, the client will be made available free of charge. This means that all laptops and remote desktops in the enterprise can be equipped at zero cost. The enterprise purchases a licence based only on maximum concurrent users of the technology, not on clients deployed. Additionally, since the MACC terminates on Expand's current datacentre hardware and management systems, no additional datacentre appliances are required, and the potential for further savings in capital and operational costs - such as maintenance, power consumption and cooling - are exponential. The MACC is also designed to smooth large organisations' evolution into distributed, social enterprises. For example, Freestyle Mode is enabled when the client finds itself alone in a home office, hotspot or hotel room. The MACC will then employ dynamic discovery of the applications in use and the bandwidth available, optimising performance and QoS policies for all applications with zero touch. This includes powerful peer-to-peer/client-to-client QoS support for VoIP and video services (for example). Finally, when the client is in a large branch office or HQ, the Intelligent Location Detection understands there is a physical appliance, and the client switches into Slipstream Mode. For all modes of operation, user behaviour and application performance is configured and monitored from a single management station. Elie Barr, CEO of Expand Networks concludes, "Large enterprises with numerous small branches previously faced a choice of implementing either a mobile client or a physical appliance for WAN Optimisation. The MACC completely resolves this ‘client or appliance' dilemma, by providing the benefit of both individual and shared cache in one solution while significantly lowering TCO." The MACC Client will be available in the fourth quarter of 2009, free of charge. Concurrent user licences will be priced from sub $100 dollars per user, dependent on licenses purchased. Expand Networks is demonstrating its Mobile Accelerator Client on Booth 2325 at Interop 2009, Las Vegas. |
