PowerLink load balances VPN links between Samy’s corporate office and main store.

Plymouth, MN – December 8th, 2009 – Ecessa, a leader in affordable WAN link controllers for small-to-medium sized enterprises (SME), today announced that Samy’s Camera has selected Ecessa’s PowerLink WAN link controllers to manage its inter-office network connectivity for 24/7 uptime. Samy’s had two primary reasons for deploying PowerLink. They wanted to ensure reliable network connectivity between their corporate offices and their retail stores to prevent network downtime, and they needed a solution that would efficiently balance VPN traffic over multiple Internet links to provide a fast and reliable backup for their point-to-point T1s.

The point-to-point T1s between their data center and the retail stores has had several recent incidences where the connection has been down for 35-40 hours each time. Some of the incidents have been due to human error at the service provider, and some due to malfunctioning equipment at the service provider. “Network downtime is unacceptable for us as we depend upon our networks to run our business”, states Lars Oberg, IT Manager at Samy’s Camera. “We have 75 employees in corporate, and approximately the same amount of users in our main store who rely upon our networks for conducting mission-critical business. All locations combined, there are about 300 employees.”

Samy’s Camera runs real-time applications over their network - ERP system: point of sale, purchasing, accounting, custom business applications, and other database-driven applications that run over the PTP T1 connections. When a PTP T1 fails, network traffic automatically fails over to the VPN. However, the VPN has proven too slow and unreliable to be able to handle all the traffic. They needed a solution that would automatically load balance traffic between multiple Internet links, creating a virtual pipe with enough bandwidth for the VPN to operate efficiently.

Samy’s also has a growing group of remote users that connect from the field and from home. When automatic software and security updates occur, they can sometimes consume most of the bandwidth, and the network performance for these users can dramatically drop to at point where they become unproductive. With the PowerLink deployed the network performance problem is virtually eliminated, with traffic now load balanced among multiple connections, and sent to the links with the least amount of latency.

Samy’s is also looking for substantial bandwidth cost savings each year by replacing PTP T1s with multiple lower cost broadband links that the PowerLink will automatically load balance and provide failover for. Samy’s currently pays $400 - $770 per month for each PTP T1 that they hope to replace with lower cost broadband links that cost approximately $200 - $300 per month.
Samy’s Camera has two PowerLink 200 units deployed for site-to-site channel bonding between their main store on Fairfax Avenue, and their corporate office. There are three Internet connections at each of the sites, which the Ecessa PowerLinks manage and load balance, providing a fast and reliable redundant solution for the point-to-point T1 if it goes down. According to Oberg, “After testing the VPN over the PowerLinks in a live environment for several weeks (by intentionally keeping the point-to-point T1 shut down) it has become clear that the VPN now performs well enough to totally replace the expensive point-to-point T1. Additionally, it creates fast and reliable Internet access for all users at the locations, that does not bog down due to one or two big downloads.”

About Ecessa
Ecessa is a leader in affordable WAN link controllers for WAN and ISP link aggregation, automated load balancing, failover and network security tailored to meet the needs of small-to-medium sized enterprises (SME) that rely on the Internet for e-commerce and business-critical application delivery. Ecessa helps SMEs rapidly grow their business with 24/7 network high-availability, optimized WAN performance, flexible scalability and secure access - while streamlining IT costs. At one-third the cost of other competing products, Ecessa’s products deliver industry leading price/performance value. Ecessa optimizes WAN traffic for organizations of all types who wish to improve network and application performance and eliminate downtime for business-critical, time-sensitive applications. Ecessa uses multi-homing to connect a single LAN or WAN to multiple ISPs; enables quality-of-service (QoS) to prioritize network traffic that ensures the best possible bandwidth is always available to applications, especially during periods of congestion; and uses link load balancing and automatic failover to direct traffic to WAN links with the optimum bandwidth and cost-efficiencies. Over 6,000 companies rely on Ecessa to cost-effectively ensure that each application has the appropriate Internet bandwidth and availability needed to support user and business requirements. The company is headquartered in Plymouth, MN. For more information, visit www.ecessa.com, or call us at 1-800-669-6242.

About Samy’s Camera
For over 30 years, Samy's Camera has been a leader in sales and rentals for imaging products, and a top resource for professional and amateur photographers in California. Samy’s main store location is on Fairfax Avenue, with four floors brimming with the latest and most exciting photographic equipment available. Customers can select from all types and sizes of film, darkroom equipment and supplies in their Film and Darkroom Department. Samy's Pro Digital Department offers cutting-edge digital imaging technology, along with the expert personnel to help customers create a customized digital imaging workflow system. Samy’s Camera has six locations in Southern California, from Santa Barbara to Orange County. Its corporate offices are located on Beatrice Street and supports full-service stores in Culver City, Santa Barbara, Venice, Santa Ana, and Pasadena.

WAN link optimization is also known as WAN Failover, Link Aggregation, ISP Load Balancing, ISP Fail-over, Multi-homing Load Balancing, QoS WAN Optimization, WAN Load Balancing, Dual WAN Routers, VPN Load Balancing, MultiWAN Switching, DNS Load Balancing, Application Delivery Optimization, Internet Traffic Management, Network Bandwidth Management, Bandwidth Aggregation.