Cisco WAN Optimization Solutions Help Hundreds of Customers Accelerate Business-Critical Applications Across the WAN

Cisco® (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced that Cisco Wide Area Network (WAN) Optimization solutions that ease management of branch offices are achieving rapid adoption from hundreds of customers. Customers including freight forwarding company Panalpina Group of North America, architecture firm Reynolds, Smith and Hills, Inc., and travel leader Sabre Holdings Corporation, are using the award-winning Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) to share centralized files and increase remote users' productivity and collaboration across the organization. As part of Cisco's Application Networking Services Advanced Technology segment, these Cisco WAAS customers help demonstrate Cisco's success in improving the availability, performance, and security of applications delivered across the network platform.

"Customers are rapidly deploying Cisco WAN Optimization solutions to simplify branch data management, enable collaboration and accelerate access to consolidated application infrastructures," said George Kurian, vice president of the Application Delivery business unit of Cisco Systems. "We are pleased that customers are endorsing our core design approach to enable Cisco WAAS to be deployed and implemented seamlessly within our customers' existing network services, provisioning and operational frameworks."

Freight Forwarder Used Cisco WAAS to Enable Data Center Consolidation which Helped Save the Company One Million Dollars

An industry leading freight forwarding and logistics company, the Panalpina Group of North America, deployed Cisco's WAN optimization solution as part of their data center centralization project resulting in a one million dollar savings in capital expenses. To maintain end-users productivity, the company's IT organization needed a WAN optimization solution to ensure that the 200 employees working out of their Toronto office would have the same performance for email, file access, and print services as when the applications were delivered by local servers.

"Cisco WAAS offered us a complete solution, accelerating all the applications we were looking to optimize, including Exchange, SAP, file services and print services," says Armin Heinlein, corporate vice president, North American IT Competence Center for Panalpina. "Also with Cisco, we are confident that they deliver a global solution that can be deployed and maintained at all our locations world wide."

After testing, the company realized that Cisco WAAS delivered applications centralized in their data centers to remote end-users at the same level of performance as when the servers were stored locally without interfering with their networking services. Since Cisco WAAS is transparent to existing network services, Panalpina was able to easily install and integrate the WAN optimization solution into their existing Cisco network of routers, switches and IP communications services.

Architecture Firm Achieves LAN-like Performance Over the WAN

With numerous sites spread across the U.S., the architectural and engineering firm Reynolds, Smith and Hills, Inc. (RS&H) faced the challenge of helping collaborative teams of consultants and clients access and share information. RS&H distributed data and business critical applications in local offices connected throughout their WAN. The company's engineers and consultants struggled with the WAN latencies that slowed mission-critical Computer Aided Design (CAD) applications when accessing remote engineering files.

The company evaluated different WAN optimization solutions and discovered that most vendors required an overlay network that would interfere with their existing sophisticated network operations. The Cisco WAAS solution offered RS&H the network transparency they needed to be easily integrated into their WAN infrastructure and not interfere with their voice over IP (VoIP) phone deployment as well as their security policies.

"Our teams of engineers depend on a highly distributed network to complement their work style. They now see LAN-like performance for large file transfers after initial access, regardless of the physical location of the files being accessed by the applications," said Harold Hamm, vice president of Information Technology for RS&H. "Cisco WAAS solution gives us a comprehensive solution that transparently stores and accelerates content, while minimizing traffic to address our business challenges without adding significant cost or time delays."

With the WAAS solution deployed, teamwork and collaboration among geographically dispersed RS&H colleagues has been visibly improved. The IT group is easily managing the Cisco WAN optimization solution because it integrates into its existing network and scales to thousands of nodes as the company adds employees or opens new offices. The Cisco WAAS auto discovery, predefined application policies, and central management and control features have saved their IT managers time and increased their ability to manage and secure vital corporate intellectual property.

Travel Leader Centralizes IT, Speeds Applications, Increases Productivity