Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa Selects ACCELERATORs to Expand WAN Capacity
ROSELAND, N.J.--July 23, 2002--Expand Networks, a leader in bandwidth optimization technology, today announced that the Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa has selected its ACCELERATORs to increase capacity of its Wide Area Network (WAN).
Ford employees in two remote branch locations were experiencing congestion while trying to access productivity and back office applications such as Email, Main frame, file servers and the Internet. In order to address the resulting sluggish WAN performance, Ford evaluated two options -- to purchase more bandwidth at high recurring monthly costs or utilize Expand's ACCELERATORs to obtain the required bandwidth boost, at a one-time fixed investment.
Since their deployment, the ACCELERATORs have already delivered more than 300% increased WAN capacity over the existing links, eliminating Ford's need to spend more resources on additional frame relay services.
"In today's fast-paced and challenging business climate, the automotive industry must improve supply-chain efficiency and streamline back-office operations to keep profits strong," said Peter Christy, co-founder of NetsEdge Research Group. "But world-wide corporations like Ford Motor Company need information solutions that work everywhere they are, not just where the communications infrastructure is the best. The adoption of the ACCELERATORs by a large automaker like Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa is a validation of the importance and value of this kind of product for creating world-wide information systems."
About Ford Motor Company
The Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa (FMCSA) is the South African home of Ford, Mazda, Volvo, Jaguar and Land Rover and is one of Southern Africa's leading automotive companies.
A technologically advanced engine plant is in Port Elizabeth which machines components for the assembly plant in Silverton and produces engines and catalytic converter parts for export.
The engine plant commenced full production of the new Ford 1,6-litre RoCam engine in the year 2000 and has also been designated the sole supplier of a 1,3-litre RoCam engine to Ford plants around the world.
FMCSA's vision of producing vehicles meeting world-class quality standards is reinforced by the Company's attainment of the SA Bureau of Standards' ISO 9001 certification and the Ford Motor Company's Q1 Quality Award which recognises the company's extreme levels of excellence and its advanced systems, designed for continuous improvement in meeting customer needs and expectations. FMCSA has also been awarded ISO 14001 Certification at its assembly plant facilities in Pretoria, as well as at its Engine Plant in Port Elizabeth.
During January 2002, the FMCSA was awarded the US Secretary of State's Award for Corporate Excellence for the Company's HIV/AIDS programme.
About Expand Networks
Expand Networks pioneered the development of bandwidth boosting appliances -- the ACCELERATORs -- which increase network capacity by 100 - 400+%. The ACCELERATORs eliminate the need for costly WAN link upgrades, enabling quicker deployments of new applications to remote offices. Networked applications such as CRM, Email, ERP, Thin Client and XML increase the strain on scarce WAN resources, often hindering productivity. By removing repeat data patterns found in any type of traffic, the ACCELERATORs provide important bandwidth savings. The end-result is the decrease in network congestion, which in turn speeds up data transfers. Expand Networks allows enterprises to support more networked users, applications and services with fewer resources delivering a typical ROI of 3 to 12 months. Clients include: Motorola, Texas Instruments, Hitachi Capital and the United States Department of Defense. Expand Networks is headquartered in Roseland, New Jersey, and Tel Aviv, Israel, with offices throughout the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy. To learn more, visit www.expand.com or call 888/892-1250
Expand Networks, ACCELERATOR 6800, ACCELERATOR 4800, ACCELERATOR 4000, ACCELERATOR 2800, ACCELERATOR 2750, and ACCELERATOR 1800 are trademarks of Expand Networks, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.