Expand Squeezes 250% Additional Bandwidth From National Surgical Hospitals Network

Expand Networks'ACCELERATORs Increase Capacity on Short Haul Data Links and Deliver ROI In Under One Year

ROSELAND, N.J., February 4, 2002 -- Expand Networks, a leader in the bandwidth optimization technology field, today announced that Chicago-based National Surgical Hospitals (NSH) has successfully deployed Expands ACCELERATORs to facilitate the deployment of a critical medical application across a Wide Area Network.

NSH operates a data center in Chicago that hosts a number of applications, including an integrated hospital information system from MEDITECH, and services 10 locations across the United States. The MEDITECH application spans all aspects of hospital administration, from patient records to payment systems. Since this application is so critical to the operation of the hospital, NSHs ability to manage the bandwidth being required by these facilities is essential to delivering the level of service that their hospitals expect at a manageable cost. The remote facilities are connected to the data center via frame relay circuits ranging in size from 128K to 384K, with two 512K circuits connecting the frame relay cloud" to the Data Center. The challenge for NSH was how to grow and develop the hospitals, and remain in control of the bandwidth costs necessary to support growth.

The Expand ACCELERATORs freed up enough bandwidth on our network to effectively run MEDITECH without having to upgrade our current links. In fact, we are able to run this application with even less bandwidth usage than before, which is truly impressive," said Mr. Dave Jordan, Vice President of Information Systems with National Surgical Hospitals. By deploying the ACCELERATORs, we have successfully replaced the steadily increasing variable cost of leased data circuits with a one-time fixed investment which has recurring benefits. These cost savings on our short-haul circuits, along with faster access to our critical applications, will easily give us an ROI in less than a year."

The ACCELERATORs are built on Expands 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. Deployed in over 150 customers worldwide, Enterprise Caching operates on all network traffic on both ends of the Wide Area Network (WAN) -- central as well as remote sites. Repeat data patterns are removed from the network with important bandwidth savings. Network capacity, throughput and speed increase by an average of 100 to 400 percent, which translates to average payback periods between 6 and 12 months.

Recently, Expand has announced several healthcare users who have benefited from the ACCELERATORs bandwidth boosting capabilities. While Expand has been very successful in the financial, government and manufacturing markets, these recent implementations in healthcare organizations are indicative of the value the technology brings to this sector," said Zohar Pearl, CEO, Expand Networks. We are proud to have a mature and established IT user such as NSH validate the ACCELERATORs."

About Expand Networks
Expand Networks pioneered the development of Enterprise Caching Technology which improves enterprise-wide network performance by 100 to 400 percent or more. As each generation of mission-critical applications such as ERP, CRM, Thin Client and Web applications consume greater amounts of bandwidth, Expand Networks offers a long-term solution that accelerates the deployment of new services and applications, improves the end-user experience and reduces the Total Cost of Ownership. Expand Networks network optimization solution uniquely combines caching of all traffic types with remote monitoring and traffic management capabilities, all in a single device. Leading organizations around the world including Motorola, Texas Instruments and the United States Department of Defense are using this easy-to-deploy, scalable solution. 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 and with a global network of Value Added Resellers. To learn more, visit www.expand.com or call (888) 892-1250.

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

About National Surgical Hospitals
National Surgical Hospitals (NSH) is the innovative healthcare partner that empowers physicians to thrive in a changing marketplace and a leader in partnering with local physicians to develop freestanding surgical hospitals. Headquartered in Chicago, NSH operates facilities in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, El Paso and Odessa, Texas, La Jolla, San Diego and Walnut Creek, California, Little Rock, Arkansas, Logan, Utah, Durham, North Carolina and Phoenix, Arizona