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Belgian Media Company De Persgroep Cuts Cost and Improves Performance With Cisco Data Center Network Architecture
Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) Virtualization Helps Deliver 30 Percent Cost and Resource Savings for Data Center Operations
| Source: Cisco Systems, Inc.
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM--(Marketwire - November 24, 2007) - De Persgroep, the leading media group in
Belgium, is using Cisco® (NASDAQ : CSCO ) data center virtualization
technology to help make its media operations, including the region's most
visited news Website, www.hln.be, more cost effective to manage and better
able to handle large fluctuations in traffic volume. De Persgroep
customers and users can expect a fast response during peak demand,
improvements in the provision of business applications and services, and
the availability of more multimedia content.
De Persgroep, a media group with newspaper, magazine, online, radio and TV
interests, will use the Cisco data center solution, comprising both
network switching equipment and the Application Control Engine (ACE)
switch. By using Cisco ACE to virtualize its data center application
infrastructure, De Persgroep expects to reduce management and operational
overhead by 25 percent and to bring video streaming in-house, saving at
least 30 percent of outsourcing costs.
A virtualized data center application infrastructure will also help enable
De Persgroep to manage the large fluctuations in Web traffic generated by
the rolling news agenda, by sharing Web server resources more effectively
as well as by "ring-fencing" other business applications against peak
demand. Hits on the company's flagship website can vary by 60 percent from
day to day, reaching 525,000. In two years the company expects the site to
garner a million hits a day.
Luc Verbist, De Persgroep's director of information and communications
technology, said, "The Cisco data center virtualization and application
networking solution is vital to our business. We have the biggest news
site in Belgium and a range of other leading media products and services,
and our ambition is to grow even bigger. Our online revenue model is
visitor-driven and, with more than 600,000 daily hits across our online
media channels it is vital that we run at 100 percent availability. Every
lost hit is lost revenue. Without the application infrastructure
virtualization capabilities of the Cisco technology we would not be able to
deliver this level of service to both external and internal customers or
have the future scalability we know we will need."
De Persgroep is deploying the Cisco Data Center Network Architecture to
connect two data centers with more than 300 servers in Brussels to seven
additional sites across Belgium and Holland. The solution will comprise Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Series Switches, Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series Switches and Cisco Catalyst 3750 Series Switches to form a core network capable of
supporting Cisco data center services as well additional applications in
the future.
Cisco
Application Control Engine (ACE) modules in the data center will
support a range of data center operations, including firewall management,
application switching and streamed media. The virtual partitioning
technology in the Cisco ACE segments and isolates applications, enabling
them to act as individual modules on a single server so that applications
can be distributed across data center hardware, making more efficient use
of computational resources. Web and business applications will be
protected by Cisco PIX 500 Series Security Appliances and the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Firewall Services Module.
The Cisco data center solution at De Persgroep is being implemented by
Telindus, a Cisco Gold Certified Partner.
"Media organizations like De Persgroep manage round-the-clock business
operations that rely heavily on online services to generate valuable
advertising revenue and, consequently, the internal business systems and
applications that support those services," said Pol Vanbiervliet, general
manager, Cisco Belgium and Luxembourg. "The Cisco data center network
architecture is designed to provide such organizations with the strategy,
network foundation and services to manage their data center operations in
the most cost-effective and resource-efficient way. Technologies such as
virtualization can play a key role in enabling these organizations to
accommodate both sudden and long-term increases in customer demand and to
have an environment where it is quick and simple to deploy new products and
services."
About De Persgroep
De Persgroep is one the leading media organizations in Belgium. Its
flagship products include Het Laatste Nieuws, the highest circulation
newspaper in Belgium, and Flanders with 287,000 copies a day; VTM, the
largest commercial television station in Flanders; and the popular Q-music
radio station. De Persgroep also manages the region's largest news website
-- www.hln.be -- which has around 340,000 site visitors a day, 50 percent
more than its nearest rival. Mediafin is a financial information service
which gathers financial data from stock exchanges around the world and
delivers it in real-time to customers such as banks and stock brokers. The
company is headquartered in Brussels and employs 1,500 people.
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