Expand Networks, a leading provider of application acceleration solutions over the wide area network (WAN), today announced that its best–in–class acceleration appliance is now available as a fully virtualised WAN acceleration offering. Expand is currently the only WAN Optimisation provider that can accelerate Microsoft Terminal Services RDP and Citrix ICA through both a physical appliance as well as a virtual setting. This adapted product will be able to run on a hypervisor, a virtualisation platform that allows multiple operating systems to run on a host computer at the same time.
In line with this, Expand has also passed the stringent standards necessary to become a VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP), which gives Expand access to VMware testing software, marketing tools, and most importantly technology integration support from VMware. As the industry moves progressively toward virtualised environments, Expand continues its path of innovation with a product that integrates into infrastructure investments in virtualisation in the branch, desktops, and in the datacentre while accelerating the delivery of their traffic on the WAN.
"Aberdeen´s research shows a 75% increase in the last year in the number of organisations that are concerned about impact of server and desktop virtualisation projects on performance of their business–critical applications," said Bojan Simic, a research analyst with Aberdeen Group. "Additionally, our latest report shows that 77% of organisations reported that virtualisation initiatives are one of their top concerns around network and application performance. Expand´s focus on technology that accelerates virtual WAN applications is very timely for that reason in terms of industry trends and needs." To access a complimentary copy of this research report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?spid=30411366&cid=5150
Expand´s ability to accelerate Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is of particular relevance as virtualisation becomes more widely deployed and as this VMware initiative becomes more prevalent. Its underlying protocols are ones that Expand already accelerates particularly well.
VDI is a technology that enables desktops to be managed, supported, and executed from centralised servers located in the data center. Using VDI, a remote user can connect to the datacentre and access a virtual desktop running any enterprise application and operating system (Windows XP, Vista, Linux). VDI allows for desktop consolidation in which traditional PCs in remote locations are replaced with thin clients or repurposed PCs, enabling end–users to access their virtual desktops from anywhere.
One of the inherent challenges with VDI is that as it grows in deployment, more and more traffic will be pushed onto the WAN. Microsoft Terminal Services is currently requiring approximately 60kbps per user session (with Vista roughly double that) and with Citrix requiring on average 30kbps per user session. As a result, the ability to accelerate that traffic will grow more crucial, and that is an inherent specialty of Expand´s.
Reed Exhibitions, the world´s largest exhibition and conference organiser recently spoke about Expand´s unparalleled capabilities in supporting virtualisation environments:
"One of the forthcoming mandates that businesses will adopt will be a virtual environment based on Terminal Services over RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) migrating eventually to a Virtual Desktop Integration platform," said Duncan Carmichael, Global WAN Manager, Corporate IT, Reed Exhibitions. "Expand Networks recognises that for Terminal Services to be properly deployed as a best practice, it needs to have the capability to accelerate data and have zero tolerance for WAN congestion. By working with Expand, a proven leader in acceleration and latency mitigation, we have experienced significant performance improvements in our RDP response times while eliminating any congestion issues, and the deployment was seamless."
The interactive nature of the protocols involved in VDI"”such as Microsoft Terminal Services RDP and Citrix/ICA"” challenges WAN optimisation solutions that can handle only bulky, non–interactive TCP flows. Expand Networks, in contrast, implements WAN optimisation techniques that can provide benefit to real time interactive traffic. In addition to traditional data reduction and compression techniques, this application–specific optimisation actually multiplexes RDP and Citrix/ICA sessions together temporarily for transport over the WAN.
With Expand´s Virtualised WAN Accelerator, user capacity is reliably extended and optimised on the existing infrastructure, stretching network and hardware investments. This translates into up to a 50% reduction in IT costs and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) per user. Users are more productive because of the improved application performance, and most importantly, businesses finally realise their Return on Investment (ROI) on VDI and server–based computing with truly functional environments.
Expand will be demonstrating its interoperability with VMware products during VMWorld at the Sands Expo Centre in Las Vegas from September 15–18, Booth #1255 and at VM´08, the UK´s first Virtualisation Expo Event, October 1–2 at Earls Court London, Stand #730 as well as VMware. Virtualisation Forum 2008 in Sydney, Australia on October 15, 2008.
