Leading Law Firm Deploys PacketShapers for Unprecedented Views Into All Network Traffic to Successfully Converge Data, Voice, Video Applications
CUPERTINO, Calif.–LAWFUEL – Law Firm News –Packeteer® (NASDAQ:PKTR), the global leader in WAN Application Optimization, today announced that Reed Smith, one of the 15 largest law firms in the world, is deploying its PacketShapers™ to intelligently classify, monitor and adaptively prioritize strategic applications in support of a major data center consolidation initiative. By deploying PacketShapers, Reed Smith can intelligently identify all traffic running across its wide area network, optimize application performance through a deep understanding of its traffic types and loads, and ensure that managed service providers are delivering bandwidth levels stipulated by service level agreements. PacketShapers will also enable the firm to successfully converge its data, voice and future video applications on its existing network without requiring expensive WAN link upgrades.
With more than 1,500 lawyers operating out of 21 offices throughout the United States, Europe and the Middle East, Reed Smith provides litigation services in multi-jurisdictional matters and other high-stake disputes while supporting a full range of strategic domestic and cross-border transactions for its clients.
The firm is currently in the midst of a comprehensive data center consolidation effort that is being driven by three key factors: business continuity, to safeguard large volumes of data and provide uninterrupted service to business critical resources in the event of a catastrophic event such as 9-11 and Katrina; technical agility, to support data/voice/video application rollouts and convergence; and mergers and acquisitions, in support of new office openings and enhanced opportunities for its attorneys to work remotely with LAN-like access to a centralized pool of resources and data. These factors, combined with the time sensitivity and magnitude of cases that frequently involve collaboration between practice area specialists operating from offices world wide, require the firm’s resources to be centralized in a primary data center. Anywhere, anytime access is facilitated through the use of thin client services via a large Citrix deployment.
According to Frank Hervert, senior manager of network and messaging services at Reed Smith, the firm generates, transmits and stores an extraordinarily high volume of data, voice and video traffic accessible by all offices and supported by redundant connections to a global primary MPLS and secondary private Ethernet wide area network. Eighty-seven terabytes of storage is currently appropriated at the firm’s primary data center. Three terabytes is consumed by Microsoft Exchange-based email alone. It is common practice to transfer and store upwards of 100 gigabytes of digitized data used for depositions daily, all of which place significant demands on Reed Smith’s WAN.
“At the outset of this consolidation effort, our primary goal was to prioritize voice and Citrix traffic as distinct classes of service, with everything else treated on a best effort basis,” Hervert said. “What we didn’t anticipate during the initial migration to our centralized model is that there is much more than just basic administrative traffic like SNMP and Active Directory populating our links. This prompted us to investigate our traffic flows much more vigorously since the optimal performance of our high-priority traffic provides a distinct competitive advantage and ensures our workforce operates as efficiently and productively as possible.”
Gaining Insight With Packeteer
Having previously used Packeteer solutions to troubleshoot its network, Reed Smith opted to deploy the top-of-the-line PacketShaper 10K systems in its data center core connecting to the primary MPLS and secondary private Ethernet network. In addition to the need for better visibility into its traffic flows, Reed Smith required a solution that immediately responded to changes in traffic conditions to preserve Citrix and voice traffic priority.
“By operating out of the centralized data center, the PacketShapers have a unique vantage point to discover and react to traffic we didn’t realize was running over our network,” says Karl Greenwood, network analyst with Reed Smith. “Also, because our Internet access is centralized out of the data center, the PacketShapers can help us spot ‘less critical’ and recreational traffic that can encroach on business critical applications. So we leverage the systems to enforce adaptive policies that ‘de-prioritizes’ this traffic in the event the network experiences a temporary lull in performance.”
The intelligent visibility provided by PacketShapers also helped Reed Smith discover its high availability primary MPLS and secondary networks are functioning as originally designed. “Our primary network supports Citrix, voice and other critical data while our secondary network handles Internet, printing, and FTP loads to our data center. For business continuity purposes, should our primary MPLS network fail, all traffic is routed through our secondary private Ethernet network back to the data center and vice versa. With the help of the PacketShapers, we were able to validate our designs and track our application traffic flows. In a primary or secondary network failure we simply utilize our PacketShapers to adaptively prioritize and protect Citrix and voice traffic when they converge onto a single network sharing the Internet or print traffic. Reed Smith is also leveraging PacketShaper’s Report Center to better quantify the impact of traffic by analyzing network usage down to the level of specific hosts. This will ensure we don’t overprovision bandwidth to various branch offices, especially those with over 100 employees, which could save us from investing in significant recurring costs.”
As Reed Smith continues its data center consolidation initiative that is slated for completion in the U.S. by mid-year, it will rely on PacketShapers to apply intelligent application delivery to ensure its data/voice/video convergence achieves and maintains optimal performance. This will grow in importance as the firm prepares to rollout voice-over-IP and moves to high-definition video conferencing that is estimated to place ten times greater traffic load on the network.
About Reed Smith
Reed Smith is one of the 15 largest law firms in the world, with more than 1,500 lawyers in 21 offices throughout the United States, Europe and the Middle East. Founded in 1877, the firm represents leading international businesses from Fortune 100 corporations to mid-market and emerging enterprises. Its attorneys provide litigation services in multi-jurisdictional matters and other high-stake disputes, deliver regulatory counsel, and execute the full range of strategic domestic and cross-border transactions. Reed Smith is a preeminent advisor to industries including financial services, life sciences, health care, advertising and media, shipping, international trade and commodities, real estate, and education. For more information, visit http://www.reedsmith.com.
About Packeteer
Packeteer, Inc. (NASDAQ:PKTR) is the global market leader in high-performance, intelligent WAN Application Delivery. With over 60,000 systems deployed at more than 7,000 customers worldwide, Packeteer solutions increase WAN capacity and accelerate and ensure predictable network application performance for all users anywhere in the distributed enterprise. By automatically classifying over 600 applications and protocols and utilizing the most comprehensive network monitoring, QoS, WAFS and acceleration technologies, Packeteer solutions improve business operational efficiency and provide customers with a rapid return on investment. For more information, contact Packeteer at +1 408 873-4400 or visit the company’s web site at http://www.packeteer.com.
Safe Harbor Clause – The statements contained in this press release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including statements regarding Packeteer’s expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, express or implied statements regarding future revenues, revenue growth and profitability, spending levels by existing and prospective customers, the markets for our products, new product development, liquidity and macro economic conditions. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are based upon information available to Packeteer as of the date hereof. Packeteer assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Actual results may differ materially due to a number of factors including the perceived need for our products, our ability to convince potential customers of our value proposition, the costs of competitive solutions, continued capital spending by prospective customers and macro economic conditions. These and other risks relating to Packeteer’s business are set forth in Packeteer’s Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 16, 2006, and Packeteer’s Form 10-Qs and other reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Packeteer, PacketShaper, PacketShaper Express are trademarks or registered trademarks of Packeteer, Inc. All other products and services are the trademarks of their respective owners.
