Expand Networks and VMware Selected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics For VDI Strategy

Expand Networks and VMware Selected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics For VDI Strategy
Virtual Accelerators deliver enhanced user experience for government department’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure project at low TCO
Expand Networks, the leader in optimizing WANs for branch office consolidation and virtualization, today announced that the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is implementing Expand Networks’ WAN optimization technology to complete its organization-wide virtualization strategy of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Deployed in the datacenter as a virtual image on existing VMware ESX Hypervisor, Expand’s Virtual Accelerators will enable the rollout by ABS to migrate employees across the country to VDI.
Accelerating the delivery of traffic over the WAN by over 300%, the implementation is intended to bring users across seven regional offices into virtual proximity of their applications and datacenter services. Bruce Buckham, Servers, Systems and Storage Manager at the ABS explains; “After investing heavily in a server virtualization project, we are keen to complete our strategy by deploying a virtual desktop infrastructure. However, for the users in the regional offices who will receive their entire desktop over the WAN, we need to accelerate the data transfer to make it a workable experience.”
Leveraging existing virtual infrastructure in the datacenter, Expand’s WAN Optimization technology is deployed as a “virtual image”. Buckham adds, “Without Expand’s Virtual Accelerator, our virtual desktop plans would have stalled. The accelerators will help us realize our virtual investment, and being virtual, they fit perfectly with our strategy.”
Delivering the most advanced levels of VMware integration, the ABS can use VMware’s suite of services to deploy, manage, maintain and assure the Expand Accelerator Image within the existing virtualized infrastructure.
Paul Harapin, Managing Director, Australia and New Zealand, VMware comments; “VMware is pleased to work with Expand Networks to help the Australian Bureau of Statistics transform its operations, delivering the significant benefits of virtualization including reduced capital and operating costs. The Australian Bureau of Statistics is one of the most highly virtualized organizations in Australia and this desktop deployment will help it realize even greater business efficiencies.”
The Virtual Accelerator will extend user capacity on the ABS’ existing infrastructure, assuring the VDI experience for its employees and stretching existing network and hardware investments. In trials with 45 users in the ABS’ Perth office, the government department achieved data traffic levels of approximately 54MB through the 18MB WAN. The implementation will also enable the replacement of cumbersome local tape backup procedures with a more efficient IBM Tivoli network backup.
Expand’s Virtual Accelerators live within, and accelerate out of, virtual environments, ensuring the success of VDI strategies using techniques such as byte-level compression and caching that specifically enable real-time interactive TCP traffic and RDP protocols to be maximized. Expand's Layer 7 Quality of Service (QoS) enforcement – which provides monitoring and control at the application layer – also ensures that applications run unimpeded on the WAN. This is not just prioritization, but also includes sophisticated algorithms to combat congestion, mark packets for downstream QoS handling and rate control shaping to make sure data flows get the bandwidth they need.
Steve O’Brien, Vice President of Expand Networks APAC explains; “A common frustration for many organizations starting down the virtualization path is that once they get to rolling out VDI, they hit a roadblock as their WAN struggles to cope with the application load. Many of these companies are hesitant to bring in new hardware to optimize the data traffic because it goes against their virtual infrastructure plans. Our Virtual Accelerator, which is effectively an accelerator ‘image’, avoids the need for additional hardware, while still providing all the benefits of an Expand solution including application acceleration and QoS. The best part is that before a physical appliance can be boxed and labeled for shipment, a virtual appliance can be installed, configured and actively optimizing traffic.”