Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) Virtualization Helps Deliver 30 Percent Cost and Resource Savings for Data Center Operations
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 11/24/07 -- De Persgroep, the leading media group in Belgium, is using Cisco(R) (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(R) 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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