Wyse Technology and Expand Networks Drive Lower Costs and Better Performance of Thin Clients over Wide Area Networks

Business Wire, June 24, 2002

Business/Technology Editors

ROSELAND, N.J. & SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 24, 2002

Expand Networks

Customers Benefit From Lower Network,

Acquisition and Management Costs; More Users Can

Be Quickly Added and Supported Over Existing WANs

Wyse(R) Technology, the worldwide leader in secure, managed thin clients and Expand Networks, a leader in bandwidth optimization technology, today announced the companies are delivering desktop and network solutions that help businesses reduce the IT costs of supporting branch and remote offices.

Wyse's Winterm(TM) thin clients and Expand's ACCELERATORs enable CIOs to provide remote and branch offices with the most advanced desktops, applications and networking possible, at a fraction of the cost of traditional client-server computing, and with no changes to the existing network infrastructure. Both solutions are currently available through authorized value added resellers for both Wyse and Expand.

More and more businesses are using Wyse Winterm thin clients at remote offices. Wyse's thin clients are desktop alternatives to the personal computer. The devices cost less to purchase and support than personal computers, have better security and enable centralized, remote management. The devices display applications that reside on a server at a centralized company office and are accessed over a Wide Area Network (WAN). As the number of users at remote offices grows and companies deploy applications that are accessed by the thin clients such as mySAP.com, Oracle 11i, Siebel 7 and PeopleSoft 8, WAN performance degrades. Expand's ACCELERATORs increase network capacity, enabling businesses to support a greater number of Wyse thin clients and bandwidth-intensive applications over the existing infrastructure. The Expand solution simply drops into the network at both the campus and the remote office, enabling an immediate 100-400 percent increase in bandwidth.

"The key driver in our purchase of Wyse thin clients and the Expand ACCELERATORs was to deliver the absolute lowest total cost of ownership from our existing, and often overburdened, IT infrastructure," said Stephen Hart, systems/network administrator (MCSE, MCP I, CCNA, CCDA) with Dreyer Medical Clinic, a regional premier multi-specialty medical group. "The combined Wyse and Expand solution enabled us to provide top quality service to our physicians while containing costs. We have added 450 thin clients over the past year, and have not had to make any major changes to our network and have not had to add any staff to support the additional devices."

When managing remote locations, CIOs must take into consideration many issues. How many people will it take to support the remote offices? How often will we have to visit the offices to fix or maintain IT equipment? Will the existing network be able to handle future needs? The Wyse-Expand solution helps CIOs reduce the time spent on fixing desktop problems and eliminate the need to add numerous IT professionals out in the field to support remote offices. Customers also receive the benefit of creating a foundation for future office expansion.

Wyse's thin clients can be pre-configured from a central IT location and then installed in the field by merely plugging them in and turning them on. Should the devices ever require an upgrade to the existing software on the device, Wyse's Rapport Management Software enables updates to quickly be "pushed" over the Expand accelerated WAN and installed without an IT worker having to ever touch the device. That way, thousands of devices can easily be managed by a handful of employees working at a corporate headquarters. Expand's ACCELERATORs eliminate the need for a WAN overhaul when deploying bandwidth-intensive applications to remote facilities.

"Having operations in 22 global markets, the thin-client model was the perfect fit for our organization, because it enabled us to centrally manage all of the desktops and data coming into our worldwide offices, and significantly improved our ability to manage our business and adjust to changing market conditions," said Dev Shah, Production Services manager at Makro, a global wholesaler of food and non-food items. "As we grew, the demands on our network grew, and by dropping in the Expand ACCELERATORs solution, we greatly improved the performance of the WAN and eliminated nearly (pound)800K in recurring costs from leasing additional telecom services."

In addition to lowering IT costs, businesses continuity and disaster recovery have become increasingly essential in supporting remote offices. A Wyse thin-client environment with Expand's ACCELERATORs is a key component of a business continuity strategy. With Wyse thin clients, all data is stored on central servers, which can be easily managed, backed-up, protected and co-located to safeguard data and applications. If a thin client is lost or destroyed, no data is lost. A new one is simply plugged in and users are up and running. On the network side, CIOs have traditionally spent thousands of dollars per month to lease dedicated high-speed circuits or reserve "latent" bandwidth for backup and recovery operations. Expand ACCELERATORs ensure the expedient and cost effective mirroring of data on the central servers. The ACCELERATORs multiply network capacity on low speed links, significantly reducing the monthly costs of assuring business continuity.