ROSELAND, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Expand Networks www.expand.com, the leader in optimizing WANs for branch office consolidation and virtualization, today announced a major upgrade to its operating system – OS 6.3 – that will significantly improve the functionality, value and installation of its Accelerators. This latest OS runs across Expand’s range of physical & virtual Accelerator solutions, and introduces advanced features to help customers achieve increased performance, ease of use, value for money, greater WAN provisioning capabilities and improved management and monitoring efficiencies.

The enhanced Layer 7 QoS features of OS 6.3 provide the highest levels of integrated visibility and control in a single OS of any vendor in the market, enabling organizations of all sizes to maximize their WAN infrastructure. OS 6.3 also introduces significant advancements in ease of deployment; for example, high latency environments requiring TCP acceleration benefit from enhanced dynamic SCPS support, and a new RDP proxy feature enables “zero touch” installation into Microsoft RDP environments.

WAN Performance Made Easy

As IT infrastructures become more virtualized and distributed, so the need for effective deployment management increases. OS 6.3 has a number of new and enhanced features that enable organizations to deploy in a more dynamic & intuitive way, ensuring ease of configuration, use and ongoing management of Expand WAN optimization solutions. These include:

• Central configuration – Enhanced central configuration enables single sided configuration, making global deployments across multiple timezones as simple as possible
• SCPS TCP Acceleration auto configuration – Single Sided “dynamic auto configuration” means no need to configure remote accelerators for acceleration functionality
• TCP auto bandwidth optimization/Virtual Bandwidth – Extended ability to Optimize and control Physical and additional virtual bandwidth in dynamic environments where capacity availability is constantly changing.
• Microsoft RDP proxy – Accelerators are uniquely auto configured for “zero touch” installation into RDP environments, to deliver simple and immediate optimization & acceleration benefits for Microsoft RDP protocols with no need to change RDP Server or client settings.

Improved Optimization, Acceleration, Visibility and Control

This latest OS dramatically enhances application visibility and control via enhanced layer 7 QoS, enabling organizations of all sizes to maximize their WAN infrastructure. The new and enhanced features include:

• Enhanced VMware Vsphere4 integration - Fault tolerance and High Availability (HA) in virtualized environments enabling IT to take advantage of VMware’s suite of management tools such as VMotion, Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and High Availability, to dynamically deploy, manage, maintain and assure the performance of Expand’s Virtual Accelerator.
• Enhanced web caching for non Hard Drive appliances – The ability to now use hard Drive caching techniques in Extreme environments on our non hard drive platforms via the use of a 4GB Solid Stat memory card that simply slots into the available expansion slot.
• Enhanced TCP Acceleration with Hybla - Congestion avoidance algorithm counteracting the performance deterioration of TCP connections within high-latency terrestrial or satellite radio links.

Combining these new features with its existing RDP and Citrix Layer 7 Visibility and Control capabilities, Expand now boasts the industry’s most comprehensive Layer 7 QoS engine enabling IT to easily identify, manage and control all applications traversing the enterprise & Cloud WAN, while deployment has become even more simplified with the new dynamic installation management features.

“While tactical optimization technologies can deliver extra network capacity, if it is not being controlled appropriately it can have a detrimental effect on the company’s most important applications and, as a result, its business performance,” comments Efi Gatmor, CTO of Expand Networks. “IT has realized that maximizing the WAN is no longer just about just providing acceleration, but about enabling enhanced levels of traffic visibility and control. These latest OS advancements further enhance Layer 7 visibility and ease of use, to provide greater control and optimization of the WAN thus enabling organizations to assure the quality of user experience across complex environments.”

“Committed to a following a wholly holistic approach to WAN Optimization, Expand enables organizations to choose and use the right tool for the right application – and optimize it – regardless of network environment, or protocol. With our integrated technology, we continue to deliver this experience across physical, virtual and mobile appliances, and will continue to innovate in meeting the evolving needs of organizations,” concludes Barr.

Expand Networks OS 6.3 is available to customers on request from today, with general availability in May.