Since its inception, Hitachi Consulting has centralized applications, files and data in its Dallas data center to serve employees in all locations. To simplify serviceability in its branch offices, servers were limited, and a consistent network infrastructure was deployed across all offices to access centralized resources.

Over the years, Hitachi Consulting acquired companies and consolidated the associated applications and data in the Dallas data center. Employees that had been accustomed to local application access were now accessing applications remotely and noticed the resulting slower application response times.

In the fall of 2006, the acquisitions started to catch up with Hitachi Consulting. With data centers in Dallas and London serving 17 offices in the U.S. and seven in Europe and India, Hitachi Consulting was supporting more than 1,500 employees. The resulting slowdown in application response times was just part of the problem. Network links were operating at full capacity. Without the tools to see or understand the applications running on the network, Hitachi Consulting couldn't determine if it required additional bandwidth or if policy changes could mitigate bandwidth utilization.

This paper takes a look at the solution Hitachi Consulting found to gain visibility into the applications running on the network and to intelligently accelerate applications.