Slough, UK – May 06 2008 -- Expand Networks, a leader in application acceleration over the wide area network (WAN) and recently positioned in the Gartner’s Leaders Quadrant for WAN Optimization Controllers 2007, has announced that Darlington Building Society, a leading mutual provider of housing finance, savings products and financial services, has deployed the Expand Compass platform to accelerate various applications over the WAN and enhance the investment in its MPLS network.

Darlington Building Society has 13 branches across County Durham, the Tees Valley and North Yorkshire and made a significant investment in a new MPLS network to provide more control over resources and form the basis of its disaster recovery strategy. However, the migration to MPLS didn’t run as smoothly as expected as specific financial and mortgage applications such as Tietoenator’s Summit and Activate, and other applications including Microsoft Excel and Word underperformed in the new MPLS environment.

After evaluating products from Expand and Packeteer in the MPLS environment, Darlington Building Society selected the Expand Compass platform for its superior ability to accelerate all applications and safeguard the investment in MPLS.

“ With the introduction of the MPLS network, we discovered that applications were running slower than with our previous 256k kilostream links and business efficiency was being affected,” said Paul Gillson, Computer Development Manager, Darlington Building Society.

With the deployment of the Expand Compass platform, the integrated WAN Optimisation capabilities of compression and acceleration has significantly improved the reliability and response times of all the applications for Darlington Building Society. Byte level caching features have increased network capacity by 350% and the average acceleration rate is 250% with peaks of up to 2000%. As a result, full system and network back up is now concluded 20 hours faster than previously, greatly easing the disaster recovery process. ExpandView management tools were used for effective and simple deployment and in addition, Expand’s transparency mode enables QoS to remain in place to allow the Society full use of its MPLS provider’s services.

“ Expand has allowed us to protect the investment in MPLS and control the network more effectively,” continued Paul Gillson. “ The Expand Compass platform has helped us to cope with network demands and conduct our business more professionally.”

“ MPLS help organisations simplify the network by providing a more efficient way to manage applications and transfer information between locations but attention must be paid to the effects of application performance for remote users,” said Adam Davison, VP Sales EMEA, Expand Networks. “ The Expand Compass ensures MPLS reaches its potential and sets the standard for the performance of applications over the WAN.”

Note About the Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted December 2007 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission.  The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period.  It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner.  Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant.  The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action.  Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Darlington Building Society

Darlington Building Society (www.darlington.co.uk) was formed one hundred and fifty two years ago in 1856.  Today it is a thriving, diversified provider of personal financial services with 13 full branches, a mortgage shop and 3 community branches.  The Society offers more full service branches in its operating area than any other mutual financial firm.

Darlington Building Society employs 150 staff, has total assets under management exceeding £700m, administers over 120,000 accounts on behalf of members and customers and in the last financial year, gross mortgage lending reached a record £158m.

Expand Networks is the pioneer and leader in the WAN Optimization market and is positioned by Gartner Inc. in the ‘Leaders’ quadrant in its Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimization Controllers, 2009[i]. Expand helps organizations 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, NJ and its global locations, Expand Networks 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 Defense with over 40,000 units deployed and over 2,000 MS Terminal Services and Citrix customers.  Expand is the largest supplier of WAN Optimization products to US Government and Military agencies (greater than 10,000 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.