Layton Blackham Deploys Expand ACCELERATORs To Manage WAN Capacity Demands Resulting From M&A.

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

ROSELAND, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 15, 2002

-- Insurance Broker's Site Expansion Initiative Drives Adoption

of Bandwidth Optimization Technologies --

Expand Networks, a leader in bandwidth optimization technology, today announced that The Layton Blackham Group has selected Expand's ACCELERATORs to address Wide Area Network (WAN) performance challenges, as a result of recent mergers and acquisitions.

The Layton Blackham Group, which is ranked number 39th largest insurance broker in the United Kingdom, has over the last 5 years acquired 16 other companies to fortify its market leadership. The Group runs Citrix Thin Clients for remote access of a vital insurance management system. These acquisitions led to the consolidation and addition of the Group's facilities and personnel in multiple locations. This process, in turn, placed a growing strain on WAN resources supporting the delivery of these networked applications and services.

"We had two choices to address our congested network - a forklift bandwidth upgrade or a bandwidth optimization solution," said Martyn Beer, IT director, The Layton Blackham Group. "We anticipate ongoing growth and therefore ruled out bandwidth upgrades because we would have to increase the size of the pipe each time we acquired more users. This was not financially viable and would be very disruptive to daily operations."

Layton Blackham has implemented the ACCELERATOR 4800 at the central IT site in Chelmsford, Essex and ACCELERATOR 2750s/2800s in its remote offices. "We plan to continue deploying the ACCELERATORs -- the devices are a one-time investment which will increase our available bandwidth on a recurring basis, as well as provide us with traffic monitoring and congestion management capabilities, all in a single device," continued Martyn Beer. "The bandwidth multiplication benefits, coupled with packet recovery and data link prioritization features, makes the ACCELERATORs an integral part of our network availability strategy."

Expand's ACCELERATORs are built on patented Enterprise Caching Technology. Enterprise Caching is an application-independent technology that focuses on increasing network capacity available to all enterprise applications: IP, non-IP, web, and non-web. The ACCELERATORs are deployed in over 150 customers worldwide, and operate on all network traffic on both ends of the Wide Area Network (WAN) - central as well as remote sites. They remove repeat data patterns from the network with important bandwidth savings. The end result is an increase in network capacity, throughput and speed of 100 to 400+ percent, which ultimately translates to average payback periods of 6 - 12 months.

"Financial services companies thrive on the fast and accurate delivery of critical information delivery. Insurance advisors and brokers such as The Layton Blackham Group use it as a form of valuable currency with their clients," said Talmon Marco, president and co-founder, Expand Networks. "We are pleased to have so many respected financial institutions select the ACCELERATORs as part of their strategic WAN performance plans."

About Expand Networks

Expand Networks pioneered the development of Enterprise Caching Technology which increases network speed, capacity and throughput by 100 to 400 percent or more. Expand Networks offers a reliable, cost-effective and easy-to-deploy solution to the strain created on networks by mission-critical applications such as Intranet, Extranet, B2B, ERP, CRM, Thin Client and the Web. By accelerating the deployment of new services and applications and offering sophisticated monitoring and management capabilities, Expand Networks improves the end-user experience and reduces the Total Cost of Ownership. Clients include leading organizations such as Motorola, Texas Instruments and the United States Department of Defense. Expand Networks is headquartered in Roseland, New Jersey and Tel Aviv, Israel with offices throughout the United States and in the United Kingdom, France and Italy. The company's sales force is augmented by a global network of Value Added Resellers. To learn more, visit www.expand.com or call [phone].

Expand Networks, ACCELERATOR 6800, ACCELERATOR 4800, ACCELERATOR 4000, ACCELERATOR 2800, ACCELERATOR 2750 and ACCELERATOR 1800 are trademarks of Expand Networks, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

About Layton Blackham Group

The Layton Blackham Group is one of the United Kingdom's leading providers of insurance broking and related services. We have grown to our current position of number 39 in the United Kingdom Broking Sector by providing quality local service and consistently putting our customers first. Layton Blackham is a young dynamic company who has broken the mould of the traditional insurance broker and has consequently grown organically through recommendation and by acquisition. We are now an expanding group committed to maintaining an independent local identity and representation but combining this with the strength and buying power of a nationwide company. We have the flexibility to change with the needs of our clients and the market whilst enjoying a unique relationship of trust with our insurers. Visit us at www.layton-blackham.com for more information.