Best-in-Class Organizations Experienced 1,158 Percent Improvement in Application Response Times When Implementing WAN Optimization Solutions

Market Wire, November, 2007

"Optimizing WAN for Application Acceleration," a new benchmark report by Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks company (NYSE: HHS), found that on average, Best-in-Class organizations experienced 1,158 percent improvement in application response times when implementing WAN optimization technologies for business critical applications while Laggards experienced 10% improvement.

"Best-in-Class organizations are taking a lifecycle approach to deploying technology solutions to improve the performance of applications running on their networks. This type of approach includes implementing solutions with optimization, acceleration, and control technologies integrated with ongoing monitoring and analyzing," said Bojan Simic, Research Analyst at Aberdeen.

Ninety-three percent of organizations increased their bandwidth capacity over the last two years. However, only 52% of these organizations experienced an improvement in application response times and only 18% improved response times of business critical applications by 50% or more. The report reveals that Best-in-Class are two times more likely to have policies for prioritization of WAN traffic in place compared to Laggards. Having these policies in place resulted in three times more Best-in-Class organizations decreased the percentage of network traffic occupied by non-critical usage compared to Laggards. Also, two times more Best-in-Class organizations decreased bandwidth cost (as a percentage of total IT spend) compared to Laggards.

Aberdeen's research also found that Best-in-Class organizations have developed more robust capabilities to optimize WAN traffic compared to all others. These tools include different techniques for accelerating WAN traffic such as byte caching, file caching, application-specific compression tools, and TCP acceleration tools. In addition, these organizations are leveraging tools to control WAN traffic such as techniques for auto prioritizing of WAN traffic and assigning class-of-service. That contributed to Best-in-Class reporting 87% improvement in bandwidth utilization compared to 16% improvement for Laggard organizations.

This report examines how organizations are monitoring, optimizing, and controlling their WAN to streamline business processes, optimize networking costs, and support new technology rollouts. In addition, it highlights how deployment of technology solutions for WAN optimization and application acceleration enables Best-in-Class organizations to improve application performance and achieve cost savings.

A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part to the following underwriters: Virtela Communications, Shunra, Mazu Networks, and Exinda Networks. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=4444 .

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com .

© 2007 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
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Media Contact: Bojan Simic Aberdeen Harte-Hanks (617) 854-5281 bojan.simic@aberdeen.com