JSE-listed SA grocery chain Spar Group, in conjunction with Telkom, has deployed WAN optimisation company Expand Networks' technology to deliver a managed WAN optimisation service.
The technology was deployed across Spar's 900 locations in the country.
In a statement, Spar Group Networks Services manager Greg Hay says: “With so much time-critical data travelling over the network, we found that some Web-based applications, particularly business banking sites, were experiencing slow responses, and in some cases remote support to stores was also slow and inconsistent.
“We knew we needed to optimise bandwidth between our headquarters, distribution centres, and stores to mitigate WAN latency and congestion over our satellite links.”
Hay added, “Expand was one of many vendor solutions we evaluated during this process, including Riverbed and Cisco. Expand Networks expertise in optimising both fixed and satellite links was key in the decision process."
The deployment of the entire solution to 900 Spar sites was completed in six months.
Spar adds that Expand Networks' Byte level caching, optimisation and acceleration techniques, immediately realised a reduction in repetitive traffic flowing across the network, such as common Web sites, anti-virus updates and Windows patches.
This is while Expand's Layer 7 monitoring and QoS has provided the visibility to assess exactly what traffic is passing through links and then, more importantly, control it.
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