July 26, 2004Cacheing Servers for AirlinesAccelerators Allow Continental To Support 4x more E-Service Terminals While Speeding up Response Times by 10x July 26, 2004 09:11 AM US Eastern Timezone Continental Airlines Clears Runway for Automated Check-In With Expand Accelerators ROSELAND, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 26, 2004-- Expand Networks, a leading provider of Application Traffic Management systems, today announced that Continental Airlines, the world's 7th largest airline, is using Expand's Accelerators to enable the widespread deployment of eServices kiosks. The Expand solution optimized Continental's wide area network to support the delivery of four times more eService kiosks to all airports across the continental US with 1/3 the capital expense. The Expand Accelerators also sped up the response times of the eServices application by 10 times, thereby cutting down airport check-in lines and ultimately improving the passenger's travel experience. "Continental Airlines has gained as much as a 10:1 improvement in throughput with a one-time capital investment and no increase in recurring fees utilizing the Expand solution," said Clay Hemphill Senior Network Manager, Continental Airlines. "By using Expand, Continental has been able to rapidly and efficiently deploy our eService kiosks at our smaller domestic airports." Continental is using Expand's Accelerator appliances to compress, cache and accelerate the kiosk data and graphics between the airports and the Shared Airlines Reservations System (SHARES), a large ticketing database. Dynamic data, such as passenger seat selections, is optimized and delivered to the central SHARES database. Other static data, such as graphics and seat selection pages, are cached locally at each airport, also saving additional bandwidth. Continental is also using the Expand solution to manage traffic generated by large, internally designed customer relationship management (CRM) applications and Microsoft NetBIOS server-based traffic. Future initiatives between Expand and Continental include expanding the eServices kiosk application internationally, and utilizing Expand's new traffic-shaping capabilities that prioritize traffic and help organizations set and manage network policies. Expand recently enhanced its equipment to monitor packets up through Layer 7 and then classify, mark, queue, and rate-limit traffic based on a number of variables according to an organization's preferences. "Continental, like many of our customers, had a strategic application initiative that was being held back by the WAN and the high cost of network communications," said Pedro Colaco, vice president of marketing at Expand Networks. "The Expand Accelerator appliance's unique plug-in architecture helps companies to rapidly deploy high throughput applications in challenging environments, while enjoying significant cost savings and 400+% better response times." About Expand Networks Expand Networks is a leading provider of Application Traffic Management solutions and WAN acceleration appliances. The company's Accelerators take Application Traffic Management to the next level by employing a modular and intelligent application architecture that eliminates complexities associated with traditional traffic management solutions. The Accelerators automatically adapt to changes in traffic, remove WAN inefficiencies and maximize the performance of distributed enterprise applications. The Accelerators combine many unique features including next-generation WAN compression, application-specific acceleration, Layer 7 QoS and sophisticated monitoring and reporting. Expand has shipped over 20,000 Accelerator devices to more than 1,000 customers including Motorola, Continental Airlines and the United States Department of Defense. Expand Networks is headquartered in Roseland, New Jersey with offices in Australia, Israel, Italy, Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom and throughout the United States. To learn more, visit www.expand.com or call +1 (888) 892-1250. Expand Networks, Accelerator System 9000, Accelerator Server, Accelerator 6800 Series, Accelerator 4800 Series, Accelerator 4000 Series, Accelerator 1800 Series, HTTPS Accelerator Series and ExpandView are trademarks of Expand Networks. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
|