"The elegant WAN acceleration solution implemented by Generation-e effectively saved us a lot of money and time."  Peter Cullen, ICT & Data Hardware Manager.

Challenge

Australia’s iconic manufacturer, Blundstone Footwear were due to roll out their Australia-New Zealand project, and were looking at how they could improve application performance across the Tasman Sea.  Blundstone staff in New Zealand needed access to applications in Australia, but the applications performed so slowly over the WAN that it could take an hour just to open a directory!

IT Environment

The initial plan was to replicate servers in countries such as New Zealand which was costed at over $80,000 per location. Instead, the company spent $20,000 on Juniper appliances that sped application performance over the WAN to LAN-like levels.

Solutions

Blundstone avoided the cost of adding servers to its local and international locations by installing Juniper WAN Accelerators.  WAN Accelerators improve transaction times between sites by as much as 90%, reducing user frustration and making it possible for applications to perform properly over congested long distance links.  WAN Accelerators use a variety of means — compression, caching, boosting TCP efficiency, protocol optimisation, imposing QoS — to reduce the amount of traffic that crosses the WAN. They compress the traffic that is sent and make sure it is transferred efficiently, thus avoiding congestion.

Business Impact

• Cost savings
  Blundstone did not need to roll out more servers thus saving tens of thousands of dollars in purchase, installation and maintenance.  They also do not have to upgrade their WAN bandwidth.
• Improved staff productivity
  Their staff has access to the same information regardless of location, at the same application performance as head office.