WAN Optimization with Finance
Credit Analysis & Research Limited or CARE Ratings as it is more popularly known is one of India’s most well-regarded establishments within the banking and financial industry. CARE Ratings is an organization that provides full ratings and grading services across a wide range of industrial and commercial sectors.
CARE Ratings has an unparalleled depth of knowledge and provides its data and opinions using the very latest methodologies that are internationally accepted. CARE Ratings is called upon to provide ratings on a variety of organizations. This demand for ratings has been on the increase as India asserts herself as one of the leading global industrial powers.
The Problem
Since rating an organization involves electronic information CARE have found themselves having to invest ever increasing amounts into information technology systems that enable them to be faster, more efficient and more accurate. This burgeoning need for information by CARE’s customers led them to open a number of satellite offices housing large numbers of data entry personnel. The remote offices all connected to the centrally located Mumbai data centre using MPLS links provided by a leading telecommunications company.
The traffic that traversed the links was primarily HTTP with a sizeable quantity of Common Internet File System – CIFS. The incessant increase in the amount of data entry and creation of reports using spread sheets and word processing led to the existing lines becoming choked andtherefore suffering latencies that were proving unacceptable.
The choices available to CARE were simple. One was to increase the link bandwidth to the next available slab or to find another solution that would improve application performance. Increasing the bandwidth would have been a simple telephone call to the telecommunications provider but the cost of the increase would not be easy to justify as the need to repeat the exercise would arise again very soon considering the growth rate of the company.
It was decided to look at solutions that would accelerate the links instead. A number of vendors and their partners were contacted and asked to showcase their products to CARE’s IT team.
Mr Manish Mestry, Manager IT at Care Ratings knew what he needed in place. The main problem area to be dealt with was the connection between the Ahmedabad data entry office and the main data centre located in Mumbai. This would be the primary business objective that would determine if an accelerator solution was workable against the more expensive and longterm alternative of bandwidth increase.
CARE decided to look at a number of offerings in the acceleration market, one of them being Replify. After a thorough test cycle lasting several weeks Manish found that Replify’s Application Accelerator offered the most effective solution in terms of flexibility, cost, performance and value for money.
“Replify’s unique application acceleration offering together with its unique xDR technology alongside the superb performance it provided was extremely appealing to us, notwithstanding the cost benefits we realised,” said Manish. “The other vendors and their offerings also worked I suppose, but what made us decide on Replify was the fact that it worked so much better, coupled with the fact that we got a fantastic level of support from Swan Solutions, Teqdis and Replify themselves.
It was this comfort together with the ease of installation and performance that convinced us that Replify will deliver on the primary business need and give us peace of mind for a long time to come.”
Mr. Manish Mestry, Manager IT at Care Ratings
CARE’s requirement was that the accelerator solution should provide a level of application performance that will allow them to stretch their investment into the MPLS lines for many years to come. The solution should also be highly resilient and reliable keeping the links to the Mumbai data centre up and running and running fast!
“I am of the opinion that reliability lies in the design and architecture of the solution, whilst resilience is the ability to recover from problems in a clean and controlled manner ensuring that users are not disturbed either during installation or following a failure. Replify’s Application Accelerator addressed both these needs and was therefore the perfect choice for CARE Ratings,”
Mr. Manish Mestry, Manager IT at Care Ratings
The Solution
CARE Ratings selected the Replify Application Accelerator to stretch their available bandwidth to its maximum. The solution comprised of Replify Virtual Accelerator Appliances (VA) in each remote offices, of which there were five. There was also a Replify VA together with the Replify Enterprise Manager (REM) located in the Mumbai data centre to which the remote appliances were paired.
The system was designed by Swan Solutions and was architected around Hewlett Packard servers running VMware® ESXi in the HO and desktop servers running VMware® in the branches, thereby ensuring that the system was as cost effective as possible.
The design employed by the Replify solution also meant that there was absolutely no disruption to the users. The Replify REM directs the connecting remote Replify VA’s to their relevant partner VA’s located in the data centre. The system also allows selective access and acceleration of specific servers and network accessible storage mediums in a variety of selectable protocols, including HTTPS, CIFS etc.
Remote mobile employees could also connect using a VPN and had the ability to have their connections accelerated by using Replify’s mobile clients.
“Replify’s superb design meant that the system was up and running in just a couple of hours, accelerating traffic with the highest efficiency from the get go,”
Mr. Manish Mestry, Manager IT at Care Ratings
The Benefits
“Was our decision to go with Replify vindicated?” Absolutely! Very often organizations choose only the brands they have heard of. At CARE Ratings no one had even heard of Replify but that does not mean it is not great. We looked at the customers using Replify and the commendations it had got. For us what was most important was that it worked and we were supported in the best way. We have never regretted the decision,”
We have seen an excellent WAN offload and consequently I will not need to change my bandwidth for many years to come. The implementation has ensured that we have been able to meet our key goal: to reduce the bandwidth so we can provide for three to five years of growth using the same communications infrastructure, and to ultimately deliver a level of application performance experience that our users want.”
Mr. Manish Mestry, Manager IT at Care Ratings
If you’re a vendor or an end-user, you should be talking to Replify. We can help you make your products more compelling and more cost-effective – contact us here: sales@replify.com