Local reseller chosen for Expand Networks win

The company chose its channel partner Corporate Express, based in Canberra, to deploy a virtual image on existing VMware ESX Hypervisor in the data centre.

Expand's Virtual Accelerators will allow all ABS staff across the country to use VDI.

Bruce Buckham, servers, systems and storage manager at the ABS said after investing in a server virtualisation project, it wanted to deploy a virtual desktop infrastructure.

"However, for the users in the regional offices who will receive their entire desktop over the WAN, we need to accelerate the data transfer to make it a workable experience," he said.

 "Without Expand's Virtual Accelerator, our virtual desktop plans would have stalled.  The accelerators will help us realise our virtual investment, and being virtual, they fit perfectly with our strategy."

 The ABS can use VMware's suite of services to deploy, manage, maintain and assure the Expand Accelerator Image within the existing virtualised infrastructure.

 Paul Harapin, MD A/NZ of VMware said the ABS is one of the most highly virtualised organisations in Australia and this desktop deployment will help it realise even greater business efficiencies.

 In trials with 45 users in the ABS' Perth office, the government department achieved data traffic levels of approximately 54MB through the 18MB WAN. 

The solution will also replace tape backup procedures with a more efficient IBM Tivoli network backup.

Steve O'Brien, VP Expand Networks APAC said a common frustration for many organisations starting down the virtualisation path is that once they get to rolling out VDI, they hit a roadblock as their WAN struggles to cope with the application load. 

"Many of these companies are hesitant to bring in new hardware to optimise the data traffic because it goes against their virtual infrastructure plans," he said. 

"Our Virtual Accelerator, which is effectively an accelerator 'image', avoids the need for additional hardware, while still providing all the benefits of an Expand solution including application acceleration and QoS."