Brenntag Nordic Selects Expand Accelerators for VoIP Traffic Management

Expand Networks (www.expand.com) announced that Brenntag Nordic, a subsidiary of Brenntag GmBH - the global leader in chemicals distribution - has deployed Expand Accelerators across the Nordic as part of a region-wide roll-out of VoIP.

Expand was selected for its Layer 7 QoS capability, a feature introduced in the Accelerator's current 5.0 release. Layer 7 QoS is one of several Expand features that guarantee optimal application performance regardless of wide area network (WAN) conditions.

Brenntag Nordic is a leading provider of chemical distribution with 11 industrial facilities across Nordic. The company is looking to expand its operations through potential acquisitions or mergers. This strategy requires IT agility, so Brenntag Nordic streamlined operational costs and embarked on a project to develop an IT infrastructure that permits rapid integration with other systems.

"When IBM Global Services introduced us to Expand, we saw a perfect fit for the Accelerators as part of our "acquisition-ready" communications strategy," commented Michael Langborg, Financial and IT Director at Brenntag Nordic.

The WAN was a growing liability in the speedy delivery of VoIP and other critical applications such as Lotus Notes and SAP to Brenntag Nordic's branch offices. Previous consolidation of 49 Intel®-based servers to two IBM iSeries servers combined with the migration from a PBX telephone system to a converged network placed even more demand on the WAN.

Brenntag Nordic deployed Expand's 5.0 software release as part of its 11-site deployment of the Accelerator 4800 series in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Expand is the only traffic management vendor that offers wide area network optimization solutions that work seamlessly in an MPLS environment.

"We are very thrilled that our current version 5.0 software release is experiencing overwhelming success in the market," said Pedro Colaco, Vice President of Marketing at Expand Networks.

The Accelerators combine many unique features including next-generation WAN compression, application-specific acceleration, Layer 7 QoS and sophisticated monitoring and reporting.

Brenntag Nordic is member of the German based Brenntag Group. With sales amounting to ˆ 4.6 billion in the business year 2003 and 9,000 employees worldwide at about 300 sites, Brenntag is the global leader in the growing market for chemical distribution.