EdgeConnect Integrates SD-WAN, WAN Optimisation, routing and a stateful firewall; offering a complete solution to simplify and consolidate branch office infrastructure

Dubai, UAE – March 29, 2017 – Silver Peak, the global leader in broadband and hybrid WAN solutions, today announced a series of new advancements to the Unity EdgeConnect high-performance SD-WAN solution that will enable enterprises to realise the advantages of a thin branch office. With its latest software release, EdgeConnect becomes the industry’s first fully integrated SD-WAN solution to combine high performance SD-WAN, WAN Optimisation, routing and a stateful firewall. These advancements simplify and consolidate branch office infrastructure, shift the WAN edge toward being application-driven and enable secure, direct internet connectivity to SaaS and trusted web-based applications from the branch office. With more than 350 customer deployments and counting, EdgeConnect is fast becoming the preferred SD-WAN solution for geographically distributed enterprises and partners including Clair Global, Bentley Systems, Radial Inc., and Solar Communications Group.

According to Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst Joe Skorupa, “By 2020, more than 50 percent of WAN edge infrastructure refresh initiatives will be based on SD-WAN versus traditional routers.”

SD-WAN powers the thin branch

Silver Peak EdgeConnect liberates enterprises from the cost, complexity and headaches associated with legacy router-centric branch office infrastructure. With a series of new innovations and capabilities, EdgeConnect can power an application-driven WAN edge and enable enterprises, of all sizes, to confidently embrace commodity broadband to connect users directly to applications, whether they are hosted in the cloud or the data centre. By consolidating branch office infrastructure at the WAN edge, enterprises can dramatically simplify operations and lower costs without sacrificing network or application performance.

Granular SaaS and cloud application visibility and control with first-packet iQ

EdgeConnect incorporates a new feature called First-packet iQ that automatically identifies more than 10,000 applications and 300 million web domains based on the first packet received. With granular insight into HTTP/HTTPS traffic, First-packet iQ enables internet breakout automation by steering specific, trusted SaaS and web-based application traffic directly to the internet while directing unknown or suspicious traffic to a regional hub or data centre firewall for further inspection. Direct internet breakout automation optimises SaaS and web application performance, enhancing worker productivity and business agility. First-packet iQ utilizes sophisticated techniques to provide the highest levels of application awareness and intelligence available today. The techniques include a dynamic application data repository based on DNS queries and hosted in the Silver Peak cloud portal, DPI, TCP/UDP port data and IP protocol methods to assure accurate application identification on the first packet.

Integrated stateful firewall for secure Internet breakout

EdgeConnect now integrates a stateful firewall that supports foundational firewall and security capabilities for branch office locations that do not host applications. The integrated stateful firewall allows outbound traffic to exit, but only allows ingress traffic to enter in response to user-initiated sessions providing robust, thin branch security. For applications traffic directed to regional or corporate firewalls, EdgeConnect supports seamless service chaining across its industry-leading technology alliance ecosystem that includes: Check Point Software, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet and zScaler.

Seamless routing interoperability

EdgeConnect now supports industry-standard BGP routing protocols for seamless interoperability between the SD-WAN and legacy WAN architectures. BGP routing protocols facilitate full mesh network configurations and dramatically simplify the addition of local subnets to an SD-WAN, enabling enterprises to transition to an SD-WAN at a comfortable pace. The combination of an integrated stateful firewall and routing interoperability enables progressive enterprises seeking to rapidly integrate acquired companies or consolidate branch office infrastructure to transition to a thin branch without sacrificing the performance, security and reliability of their WAN.

“We’re embarking upon a long overdue revolution of the legacy WAN as enterprise network managers reach a boiling point over the rigidity, complexity and escalating costs associated with router-centric architectures,” said Damon Ennis, senior vice president, products at Silver Peak. “Increasingly, enterprises are seeking to simplify branch and WAN Edge infrastructure with SD-WAN solutions that connect users directly from branch offices to cloud-hosted applications without sacrificing application performance. EdgeConnect enables distributed enterprises to immediately or progressively transform their router-centric WAN infrastructures to an SD-WAN to gain the performance, security, reliability and control they require to keep pace with changing business requirements.”

Solar Communications Group

Solar Communications Group, headquartered in London, is a leading telecommunications reseller that provides businesses with bespoke and flexible communication solutions that help them improve efficiencies and save money.

“Businesses are looking for ways to securely and reliably connect their users to applications using the most cost-effective combination of transports that don’t compromise network or application performance,” said Jason Evans, disruptive technologies director for Solar Communications Group. “Silver Peak provides us with the most comprehensive solution to equip our customers with agile and cost-effective connectivity between their sites. From concept to deployment, Silver Peak provides the full breadth of SD-WAN edge functionality, giving our customers the best-in-class technology available for today, as well as for the future.”

Bentley Systems

Founded in 1984, Bentley Systems is a global leader in comprehensive software solutions for advancing infrastructure. With a global footprint spanning more than 50 countries, the performance and availability of the firm’s network and applications is critical to enabling its more than 3,000 employees, across 90 locations, to design, develop and deliver a complete portfolio of infrastructure lifecycle management software.

“Our managed NaaS-based SD-WAN solution was proving cost prohibitive to scale so we conducted a proof-of-concept and selected Silver Peak EdgeConnect. We selected EdgeConnect for its superior performance, advanced feature-set and ability to cost-effectively scale in line with our business requirements,” said David Craig, network manager, Bentley Systems, Inc. “We put our trust in Silver Peak as the first customer to deploy BGP routing in a production network and we are very satisfied with our ability to easily create a full mesh network and dynamically route traffic between our 15-central hub and 80+ satellite office sites. To date, we’ve realised a 15 percent gain in network and application performance and we’re on track to a three-month ROI that will enable us to save more than $1.4M in connectivity costs over the coming three years.”

Clair Global

Founded in 1966, Clair Global, based in Lititz Pennsylvania, provides its clients with industry-leading production equipment and services for concerts, corporate events and festivals around the world. With a mission to exceed client expectations, the performance of the firm’s network and applications is critical to the overall success of their business.

“To simplify network operations and lower connectivity costs, we evaluated a range of SD-WAN solutions and ultimately selected EdgeConnect for its high performance, advanced features and ease of deployment,” said Ben Harris, lead network administrator, Clair Global. “We deployed the EdgeConnect software, taking advantage of 2-way BGP routing to mesh our global sites together and enable us to simplify router management, embrace commodity broadband and seamlessly connect our employees to the applications that drive our business. From inventory control to VoIP and client data our network and applications are performing better than ever before. More simply put, EdgeConnect has been a game-changer for Clair Global.”

Radial Inc.

Radial Inc., headquartered in King of Prussia Pennsylvania, is the leader in omnichannel commerce technology and operations, enabling brands and retailers to profitably exceed retail customer expectations from ‘behind-the-click’ with advanced order submission, payment authorisation and rapid shipping and fulfilment systems. The firm’s wide area network and applications underpin its continued success and will serve to fuel future growth and expansion.

“Our deployment of the EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution brings us new levels of simplicity and flexibility in connecting our employees to business applications using cost-effective broadband transport,” said Ray Stegmaier, senior director of network operations, Radial Inc. “With new capabilities like BGP routing combined with integrated WAN Optimisation with Unity Boost and advanced application visibility and control with Unity Orchestrator, we’ve regained control of our network and can take full advantage of commodity broadband without compromising network or application performance. EdgeConnect has proven phenomenal for us, the shift has been transparent to employees and we’re well on our way toward reducing our monthly MPLS connectivity costs.”

About Silver Peak

Silver Peak is the global leader in broadband and hybrid WAN solutions. Silver Peak offers a high-performance SD-WAN solution that provides secure and reliable virtual overlays to connect users to applications with the flexibility to use any combination of underlying transport without compromising network or application performance. This results in greater business agility and lower costs. More than 2,000 globally distributed enterprises have deployed Silver Peak broadband and hybrid WAN solutions across 80 countries. Learn more at www.silver-peak.com.

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• Thomson Reuters TRust Index Fourth-Quarter Results Down on Third Quarter

• Trust in global financial institutions remains negative at the year end; regional differences narrow
• Regulatory activity up 43% on 2012, with 103 average daily alerts in 2013
• Divergence between strong analyst growth estimates and low investor expectations for growth continues

LONDON/NEW YORK, January 16, 2014 – Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today announced the latest results of its proprietary TRust Index showing that trust sentiment in the Top 50 Global Financial institutions finished the year stronger, but still negative, with fourth-quarter sentiment below that of the third quarter.  Analysis of the Top 50 Global Financial institutions for the fourth consecutive quarter of TRust Index metrics revealed several trends observed throughout 2013, among them a regional convergence of news and social media sentiment; continued confidence in analyst expectations; and proliferation of regulatory activity.

“Throughout a year which saw dramatic improvement in markets and numerous headline events impact the financial industry, trust sentiment amongst news and social media, whilst still modestly negative, had recovered from 2012’s lows and stabilized,” said David Craig, president, Financial & Risk, Thomson Reuters. “Our data reveals a stronger industry, which enters 2014 within a much-changed landscape and an ever-increasing regulatory focus.”

Tracking trust through news and social media sentiment shows that the Top 50 Global Financials ended the year with a fourth-quarter trust score of -1.75 percent, down from -1.5 percent in the third quarter.  At the regional level, the top institutions in Europe/UK scored the highest trust sentiment in the fourth quarter, ending the year at -1.25 percent, down from -1.0 percent in the third quarter. Institutions in the Americas scored lowest with -1.85 percent in the fourth quarter, versus -1.6 percent in the third quarter.  The Asian institutions, which had led in trust scores for most of 2013, were down at -1.5 percent (-1.0 percent in the third quarter).

Headline events affecting trust sentiment scores over the fourth quarter included:

• Record mortgage- and LIBOR-related bank fines, penalties and settlements exacted by US and European regulators
• The US government shutdown; cuts to Asian GDP growth forecasts by the World Bank
• IMF and ECB activities around capital buffers, debt, leverage and risk
• The release of the approved Volker Rule on December 10, 2013.

Other features of this quarter’s TRust Index follow below; please click here for further insight and data:

The Confidence of the Marketplace – Investors and Analysts

Fourth-quarter earnings growth estimates for the financials sector continue to show high expectations by analysts. Sridharan Raman, senior research analyst at Thomson Reuters, said, “At 22.4 percent earnings growth estimates for the sector, financials are just below telecommunications companies this quarter at 22.6 percent, but still well ahead of all other S&P 500 sectors.”

According to Thomson Reuters StarMine, analysts forecast forward 5-year growth rate for the Top 50 Global Financials at 9.0 percent, above the 8.0 percent expectations for the S&P 500.  However, we are still seeing investors discount growth, with market-implied growth rates at -2.1 percent.  This is further reflected by a 4.9 percent price appreciation in the Top 50 Global Financials stocks over the quarter, below both the S&P 500 (9.3%) and Thomson Reuters Global Index (6.7%).

Aggregate changes to analyst recommendations over the fourth quarter for the Top 50 Global Financial institutions reveal downgrades continued to outnumber upgrades across all regions, although only by a small margin.  This quarter, the highest numbers of upward revisions were seen for the UK/Europe institutions, due in part to the improved UK housing market increasing loan demand.

Counterparties: Credit Spreads as an Indicator of Trust

In the fourth quarter, credit default spreads (CDS) continued a long-term tightening trend, reflecting an overall increase in confidence among the Top 50 Global Financial institutions in pricing the relative risk of doing business with each other.  Institutions in the Americas ended the year with tightest spreads, and Asia the widest.  With the average spread for the Top 50 Global Financials at about 103 basis points, CDS ended 2013 far below 2011’s high of nearly 350, demonstrating the positive appetite in the bond market and reduced risk of default.

Regulation as a Barometer of Trust

According to Chris Perry, managing director of Risk at Thomson Reuters, “The proliferation of regulatory activity over the past several years must be seen as a growing and permanent condition for the global financial industry and a significant factor in the cost of doing business”.

The average daily number of regulatory alerts tracked by Thomson Reuters Accelus was above 100 for the second consecutive quarter, roughly double the daily average in 2010, and at the end of 2013 stood at 26,898 alerts, an increase of 43 percent over 2012 (18,761).  This increase reflects both increased activity by regulators and additional monitoring by Thomson Reuters.

Tracking Controversy and Governance as Factors in Rebuilding Trust

Thomson Reuters ASSET4 environmental, social and governance data, shows that a high level of controversies have been reported for the Top 50 Global Financials relative to the Financial Sector as a whole, but that adoption of processes and governance to address responsible marketing practices, improve fair competition and avoid bribery and corruption, all continue to be priorities.

Thomson Reuters TRust Index leverages proprietary data analytics, news and social media sentiment analysis.  This latter indicator draws on over four million business and financial news and media sources to track the state of trust in the Top 50 Global Financial institutions.  This two-minute video explains further how the measures in this quarter’s TRust Index relate to the state of trust in the global financial market place over the quarter.  Please click on first quarter 2013, second quarter 2013 and third quarter 2013 for previous results.

Sources: Thomson Reuters ASSET4, Thomson Reuters Business Classification (TRBC), Thomson Reuters Datastream, Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S, Thomson Reuters MarketPsych Indices, Thomson Reuters News Analytics (TRNA), Thomson Reuters StarMine Quantitative Models

About Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters is the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals.  We combine industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers in the financial and risk, legal, tax and accounting, intellectual property and science and media markets, powered by the world’s most trusted news organization.  With headquarters in New York and major operations in London and Eagan, Minnesota, Thomson Reuters employs approximately 60,000 people and operates in over 100 countries. Thomson Reuters shares are listed on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges. For more information, go to http://thomsonreuters.com

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Move further underlines Company’s commitment to connect buy and sell side professionals across disparate financial communities

India, 08 August, 2013 – Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today announced that it has expanded the Eikon Messenger community on the buy-side through the integration of its FXall clients. All FXall customers will now be able to seamlessly connect, interact and collaborate with Eikon Messenger’s global community of 190,000 financial professionals directly from their FXall toolbar, via the latest release of FXall Trading.

Instant messaging has become a critical part of the financial community’s price discovery and pre-trade operations. Instant messaging communities, however, are traditionally allied to a particular company or technology platform which can make them siloed, disparate and closed by design. As a result, financial markets professionals are currently limited to making contacts within their chosen messaging network or forced to manage the complexity of multiple messaging systems.

Thomson Reuters Eikon Messenger is built on open-based standards and offers a secure, federated messaging system that through the integration of FXall further drives the Company’s mission to more effectively bring together sell-side and buy-side communities. FXall clients, which account for approximatly 1,300 institutional firms across a range of traders, asset managers, corporate treasurers, broker-dealers, prime brokers, market makers and more, can now access the live feed of continuous cross-asset global macro data, news and market expert commentary available over Thomson Reuters Eikon Messenger’s 27 global chat forums. They will also be able to collaborate in real time with liquidity providers and colleagues through instant electronic conversations as well as create public or private communities from across a global network of over 190,000 financial professionals, from 170 countries.

“Financial professionals depend on instant messaging tools to interact with the wider financial community and want tools that allow them to interact, irrespective of their choice of provider.  This is why we’ve always been focused on using open standards and with connecting with other widely used instant messaging systems,” said David Craig, president of Financial & Risk at Thomson Reuters. “By opening up Eikon Messenger to the FXall community we are enabling the sell-side and buy-side to communicate more efficiently within networks they already trust. This is about helping our customers find new counterparties and unearth new business opportunities whilst reducing complexity.”

Thomson Reuters Eikon Messenger (formerly Thomson Reuters Messenger) is an enterprise-level instant messaging and real-time collaboration solution, specifically designed for the financial markets. It is open to all financial markets professionals, regardless of the desktop they use, and available either via Thomson Reuters Eikon or as a standalone instant message tool. It allows financial professionals around the world to participate in a focused and authenticated community consisting of customers, colleagues and business counterparties. Members can exchange market information, ideas, insights and user-generated content securely, while benefitting from access to the breaking news and views of Reuters journalists through specific, editorial- and user-led communities such as the Global Markets Forum.

“The integration of Eikon Messenger with the latest version for FXall Trading unlocks a number of exciting opportunities for our clients,” said Phil Weisberg, global head of FX at Thomson Reuters. “It not only broadens and diversifies the information available to our client base but also deepens their exposure to a wider community that can be tapped for their daily business trading operations in FX. It also builds on Thomson Reuters move towards bringing together the buy side and sell side to serve a broader universe of institutions with more competitive, compelling end-to-end solutions for the FX markets.

To sign up for Thomson Reuters Eikon Messenger go to: https://thomsonreuterseikon.com/features/collaboration-tools/

Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters is the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals. We combine industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers in the financial and risk, legal, tax and accounting, intellectual property and science and media markets, powered by the world’s most trusted news organization. With headquarters in New York and major operations in London and Eagan, Minnesota, Thomson Reuters employs approximately 60,000 people and operates in over 100 countries. Thomson Reuters shares are listed on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges. For more information, go to thomsonreuters.com.

The post Thomson Reuters Expands Buy-Side Community on Eikon Messenger through FXall Integration appeared first on Core Sector Communique.