Expand, a provider of application acceleration solutions over the Wide Area Network (WAN), today announced that Tearfund, the Christian relief and development agency, has implemented Expand’s WAN Optimization technology to ensure resilient communications across its global network of aid teams.

Expand Networks’ technology has drastically improved the performance of the organization’s satellite links at its most remote locations, providing reliable connectivity and placing its extensive overseas workforce in virtual proximity of critical applications.

Tearfund works in 60 countries in the developing world, through 300 indigenous, church-based organizations and supports over 1,000 front-line staff responding to natural and man-made disasters. Employees’ limited access to applications due to high latency and packet loss over satellite networks meant that bandwidth capacity was becoming an increasing concern. Tim Clarke, IT Director, at Tearfund explains, “Initially, our overseas programs were individually responsible for purchasing their own satellite bandwidth, and it became clear that the price and the quality of service received was inconsistent and hampering productivity. In central Asia for example, the latency on the satellite links was so high that establishing a VPN to the London network was not even possible. We entered into a global satellite network agreement to standardize the bandwidth procurement process, but we also knew that optimizing those links was going to be essential to improve communication across all our regional sites.”

Following evaluation with Expand Networks and Riverbed, Tearfund chose Expand Networks for its demonstrable ability to support a VPN and accelerate traffic even on very poor links. Implemented first with Tearfund teams in central Asia, the most problematic region, the integrated WAN optimization technology within Expand’s platform enabled Tearfund to immediately compress and accelerate traffic across the satellite links. Tim Clarke continues, “With Expand in place, we are easily able to run applications in the field from servers in London. Productivity can be directly linked to application performance, and with Expand we have a solution that is enabling our workforce to remain efficient, helping us to deliver our vision of connecting people with resources and the people who desperately need them across the globe.”

Expand has been deployed in six of Tearfund’s global locations. With regional hub sites experiencing great improvements in network throughput, plans are also being made to deploy Expand to optimize satellite links at Tearfund’s field sites across the globe. Tearfund is rolling-out a new finance and logistic package across the organization with the support of Expand.

Tim Clarke explains, “The new applications run on Terminal Servers in the UK. We were initially doubtful that this would be feasible. Our fallback plan was to install servers at each of our overseas offices despite the cost and difficulty of supporting and synchronizing servers in remote locations. However, with the Expand Networks, Terminal Services works so well this is just not necessary. We are delighted to have just one application server to support in London instead of one in each regional office.”

“Expand Networks’ technology, with Space Communication Protocol Standard truly integrated, excels in satellite environments by mitigating the traditional low bandwidth, high latency obstacles to improve application performance and user productivity,” said Mike Betz, VP Sales EMEA, Expand Networks. “But investing in Expand Networks’ technology provides many benefits to organizations by enabling multiple projects over the WAN including satellite, server based computing and virtualized computing, renewing ROI and improving TCO on the infrastructure.”