Slough, UK – November 28, 2007— Expand Networks, a leader in application acceleration over the wide area network (WAN), is addressing the concerns of the enterprise during virtualisation initiatives by guaranteeing application performance over the WAN leading to the successful implementation of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).

Enterprises are migrating from Terminal Services environments to desktop consolidation, utilising VDI as the foundation to deliver centralised desktops to remote users. VDI promises to significantly reduce IT capital and operational costs, provide a far more secure branch infrastructure and offer organisations greater responsiveness and flexibility. The challenge with VDI is that branch offices become wholly dependent on the WAN for the performance of their business applications. By deploying the Expand Compass, organisations can improve application performance and mitigate inherent WAN issues that jeopardise VDI projects such as latency, bandwidth constraints, reduced number of users and lack of prioritisation of critical applications.

Reed Exhibitions, the world’s largest exhibition and conference organiser bears testimony to Expand’s unparalleled capabilities in supporting virtualisation environments:

“One of the forthcoming mandates that businesses will adopt will be a virtual environment based on Terminal Services over RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) migrating eventually to a Virtual Desktop Integration platform,” said Duncan Carmichael, Global WAN Manager, Corporate IT, Reed Exhibitions. “Expand Networks recognises that for Terminal Services to be properly deployed as a best practice, it needs to have the capability to accelerate data and have zero tolerance for WAN congestion. By working with Expand, a proven leader in acceleration and latency mitigation, we have experienced significant performance improvements in our RDP response times while eliminating any congestion issues, and the deployment was seamless.”

Expand’s unique capability to manage and optimise all IP WAN traffic including RDP and VoIP provides significant benefits for enterprises in VDI environments. Deploying the Expand Compass platform in VDI initiatives enables enterprises to have up to ten times more users on the same bandwidth link from the branch office to the datacentre. The Compass real time QoS engine prioritises business critical applications and supports the VDI protocols without creating any additional load on the server infrastructure typical with RDP installations. It also manages VoIP streams to ensure voice quality and guarantees service levels for all Terminal Services.

In addition, Compass’ TCP Acceleration, tightly integrated with compression and QoS, mitigates latency to accelerate file downloads, presentations and print tasks by up 900%. Integrating Compass into the network does not require any configuration modifications and using Expand’s Transparency Mode, visibility and control are maintained throughout the WAN.

Adam Davison, VP Sales, EMEA, Expand Networks explains, “ Expand’s unique ability to accelerate and manage the interactive nature of RDP traffic over which VDI connections run, guarantees application performance in a virtual environment and the successful migration to VDI. With its holistic WAN optimisation approach, only Expand Networks can truly support VDI deployments providing real value to desktop consolidation projects.”

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.