Old Republic Title Company Launches 3Com Enterprise Network to Expedite Its Business-Critical Real Estate Services

Business Wire, Sept 8, 1999

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 8, 1999--

Real Estate Transaction Firm Relies on 3Com WAN Solutions to

Accelerate Services by Linking Offices in Five States

With Impending VPN Connectivity

3Com Corporation (Nasdaq:COMS) today announced that Old Republic Title Company (Old Republic), a leading West Coast provider of real-estate transaction services, is greatly boosting its productivity and speeding delivery of its services via a wide area network (WAN) built with 3Com technologies. When fully deployed later this year, the network will link 115 remote sites in five states, greatly facilitating the firm's key business operations, such as title searches and the sharing of the data and documents needed for real-estate transactions. Old Republic's WAN will feature a 3Com-based virtual private network (VPN) solution, which will ensure the safe delivery of confidential files between all sites, including remote users working at home. Based in San Francisco, California, Old Republic also is enhancing the local area networks (LANs) at its main offices with 3Com switches to improve users' access to databases and other vital business information.

Founded in 1969, Old Republic provides high-quality real estate transfer services and products for homebuyers, investors and governmental agencies. Its success in the marketplace depends on offering these customers a broad range of services quickly and efficiently, such as title searches, escrow services and technical assistance for transactions. The firm's title departments, for example, research records on land titles and submit preliminary reports to clients within 72 hours. Old Republic's escrow departments draft the complicated escrow instructions that result in successful real-estate transactions. The company delivers these and other services and products via branch and regional offices distributed throughout California, Washington, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii.

Based on 3Com's CoreBuilder(R), SuperStack(R) II, PathBuilder(TM), NETBuilder(R) II, OfficeConnect(R) systems and Fast EtherLink(R) network interface cards (NICs), Old Republic's WAN is reducing by hours and days, the time required for many vital business processes. Rather than rely on dial-up access, remote users now can use the network to rapidly perform research on properties, buyers and sellers by accessing databases from vendors like TRW, quickening the delivery of its services and hastening real-estate transactions. The firm's escrow agents can notify the accounting department in minutes rather than days whenever an escrow check is issued or deposited, providing for a far more timely flow of financial information. The network supports centralized custom-built databases that are automatically updated within minutes whenever a remote user enters data for a real-estate transaction. As a result, all company records are continually backed-up, ensuring their safety and easy access by other users and departments. Moreover, the network's VPN services will guarantee the secure and reliable delivery of confidential information between any locations, allowing Old Republic to offer its clients the highest levels of privacy and dependability.

"By linking our sites with a networking infrastructure from 3Com, we are revolutionizing how we do business," said Robert Matanane, manager of operations for ORTICON, Old Republic's information technologies department. "Whereas before, we communicated with our offices through sporadic dial-up sessions, we now have integrated our company into a cohesive enterprise that is more productive and responsive to our customers' needs. Thanks to 3Com, we can deliver premium services and products more efficiently than ever before, bolstering our competitive stance in the marketplace."

Integrating the Enterprise with 3Com Networking Technologies

Old Republic's new enterprise network is a response to the limited connectivity of its prior system. Lacking a WAN, users at remote offices used modems and dedicated desktops to dial into servers at the firm's data center in Santa Clara. Though adequate when the company was smaller, dial-up service quickly became inefficient and inconvenient as the firm's business grew. Users submitted their title and escrow reports and accessed company resources only sporadically, impeding the flow of time-critical information. Moreover, increasing levels of traffic from branch offices caused congestion at the data center as users competed for limited bandwidth.

After examining solutions from Cabletron and Cisco, Old Republic selected 3Com LAN/WAN systems because they met the firm's needs more cost-effectively. "3Com gave us more bang for the buck as well as outstanding service," said Matanane. "Moreover, 3Com's broad array of VPN technologies enabled us to efficiently meet the needs of our many sites, from main facilities with hundreds of users to individuals working from their homes."

To bolster its operations, Old Republic is installing a Frame Relay WAN that, when completed this summer, will link the firm's 1700 desktops into a reliable enterprise network. At its data center, where the firm's enterprise-wide email, Internet, intranet and back-up servers reside, Old Republic is deploying 3Com's new PathBuilder S600 WAN switch to process WAN traffic from seven 1.54 megabits per second (Mbps) T1 lines. At its 15 largest sites, the company is implementing NETBuilder II routers with dual WAN ports that link to T1 lines. Smaller sites will use 100 OfficeConnect NETBuilder(R) routers that connect to the WAN via 128 kilobits per second (Kbps) and 384 Kbps fractional T1 links.