
The Challenge
The company’s WAN optimization and application acceleration products had been sold to more than 2,000 enterprises, utilities, service providers and organizations in various sectors, in over 80 countries, and was enjoying a 70% year over year growth. But to grow further it was looking for ways to meeting increasingly demanding customization requests from resellers and customers. These requests included hardware design, specification customization, and logistics requirements with low minimum order quantities.
In other words, the company was looking for a hardware manufacturer that could address the following challenges: The first was the demand for flexible manufacturing. With lower minimum order quantities, the company could create several SKUs with customized hardware, and not worry about creating large inventories. The second was to increase their brand recognition and product awareness. And the last challenge was to get more flexible logistics to speed up shipments to customers worldwide.
The Solution
The company learnt about Lanner Electronics from one of their local distributors, and it came to the understanding that Lanner not only offered solutions for what it was looking for. Lanner’s solutions, when compared to the hardware manufacturer that they had been working with, also came with more flexibility and less stringent requirements.
Lanner’s FW-8759 was selected by the company as the first project. FW-8759 had the option of being equipped with an Intel Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo, Pentium Dual-Core or Celeron processor and it came with Intel G41 chipset, dual-channel DDR3, 2 sockets of 240P DIMM, three pairs of Lanner’s Generation 3 bypass, a maximum of 14 Ethernet ports and a maximum of 4GB system memory. The FW-8759 was deemed perfect as a WAN optimization and application acceleration product.
However, what really brought the company to Lanner, was the boundless customization options and complete service. They were now able to offer a greater range of hardware customizations with the new and lower minimum order quantities. The company also took advantage of Lanner’s product identity support for putting the final touches on their branded product, including not only the design of a 2D faceplate and chassis but also their custom packaging and labelling.
Furthermore, after the hardware was completed and the required software installed, Lanner arranged drop-shipments directly to the company’s customers in their branded box. Drop shipments could be arranged worldwide from Lanner’s logistics centers. All of this was achieved with a reasonable minimum order quantity and at a cost no higher than those offered by the company’s previous manufacturers.
The Result
Lanner has continued to work with this client and is now exploring options for a new generation of WAN optimization appliances based on the latest Intel® chipsets.
FW-8700 Series
The FW-8700 Series consists of rackmount 1U network appliances with one Ethernet module bay and a mid-range x86 Intel processor This is a popular platform for WAN optimization, UTM, firewalls, VPN and IPS.
Lanner’s FW Series of x86 network appliances are known worldwide for reliability and flexibility. In addition to the industries already mentioned, industry leaders in enterprise firewalls, application delivery and other information security sectors have used the FW series for their hardware requirements for over a decade.