WAN optimisation gear channel expands

Expand Networks has signed several large system integrators and service providers on a quest for greater WAN optimisation hardware sales.

The vendor claimed to have signed Alphawest, ASI Solutions, Clariti, Cybernet, Dimension Data, Frontline, Fujitsu Australia and NCR to its partner program.

Tony Burke, director of Expand Networks, said that integration of WAN compression, acceleration and quality-of-service products into one appliance was increasing.

Expand Networks' appliances sit at either end of a network connection and monitor traffic while managing packet transfer for network performance optimisation. The gear suits links from 64 Kb/s up to 200 MB/s.

'In some instances, the implementation of such a solution has allowed customers to downgrade their bandwidth thereby saving on their data connection costs,' Burke said.

Irwin Davis, a technology architect at Alphawest Business Solutions, said it wasn't every day something genuinely new came along.

'There are not a lot of solutions that compare favourably with [Expand Networks'] in terms of ROI,' Davis said.

'There are some extremely remote locations where quality of service is critical and the cost of secure data communication is very high. Often bandwidth upgrades are not a feasible option,' Davis said.