SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 28, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Foundry Networks(r), Inc. (Nasdaq:FDRY), a performance and total solutions leader for end-to-end switching and routing, today announced that CitiStreet, one of the nation's largest global benefit delivery firms, selected Foundry's ServerIron(r) 450 and 850 Series Layer 4-7 application delivery switches to provide content switching and load balancing for their customer-facing application and database servers, which support more than 11 million users across 16,500 benefit plans 24x7x365.
CitiStreet is the nation's second-largest defined contribution provider measured by number of participants served; they offer a broad range of products and services for defined contribution, defined benefit and health and welfare plans of all sizes in all industries. CitiStreet, with more than $230 billion in assets under administration, is a 50/50 joint venture between financial leaders Citigroup and State Street Corp. The 2006 top global Total Benefits Administrator according to outsourcing consulting firm Brown & Wilson, CitiStreet offers employee benefits services to more than 11 million participants and 16,500 plans across all markets and clients, which range from Fortune 500 to small businesses.
Foundry worked closely with CitiStreet to customize a solution that met their current needs for high-performance and reliability. As CitiStreet grows and adds further clients, users and services, the infrastructure in place must be able to handle additional traffic while maintaining high performance. Foundry's ServerIron 450 and 850 switches can scale and be easily upgraded with SSL capabilities and more processing power in the future to meet their business requirements without CitiStreet having to replace existing chassis.
CitiStreet is using the ServerIron 450 and 850 switches in two data center locations to manage the content switching and load balancing of their application and database servers that interface with customers and clients on a daily basis in order to retrieve important information in real time about benefits plans and services. As the integral networking platform for their geographically distributed infrastructure, the ServerIron 450 switches are used in conjunction with the front-end customer-facing servers, and the ServerIron 850 switches are used with the back-end application and database servers. With Foundry in their network, CitiStreet benefits from higher performance, lower total cost of ownership, and superior customer support and service.
"As CitiStreet continues to grow its benefits services customer base, we will require networking hardware that scales efficiently and without performance degradation," said Barry Strasnick, CIO for CitiStreet. "Foundry's ServerIron application delivery switches provide us manageability, content-switching and load-balancing features with high availability, scalability and high performance. Foundry provided us solid customer service as we teamed to design and implement a networking solution that addresses our current needs while allowing us functionality and feature flexibility in the future."
"CitiStreet is an undisputed nationwide leader in total employee benefits services from small businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises," said Bob Schiff, vice president and general manager for Foundry's Enterprise Business Unit. "Foundry values providing world-class solutions and support tailored to each client's needs and requirements. Working closely with CitiStreet, we have installed ServerIron Series application delivery switches that allow them the high availability and network performance that 11 million users rely upon on a daily basis, while allowing future scalability and upgradeability for CitiStreet as they add future users and services."
The ServerIron 350, 450 and 850 Series are high-performance application delivery switches in a choice of three respective form factors. These switches are built with business-critical resiliency features and are customizable for performance, port density and SSL acceleration to meet a range of application and data center infrastructure needs. All three switches are designed with a modular architecture for superior performance and scalability, and can be expanded to meet growing traffic demands including 10GbE application delivery. These application delivery switches accelerate Web-based applications and eliminate downtime caused by server and application failures.
About Foundry Networks
Foundry Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq:FDRY) is a leading provider of high-performance enterprise and service provider switching, routing, security and Web traffic management solutions, including Layer 2/3 LAN switches, Layer 3 Backbone switches, Layer 4-7 application switches, wireless LAN and access points, metro and core routers. Foundry's customers include the world's premier ISPs, metro service providers, and enterprises, including e-commerce sites, universities, entertainment, health and wellness, government, financial and manufacturing companies. For more information about the company and its products, call 1.888.TURBOLAN or visit www.foundrynet.com.
The Foundry Networks, Inc. logo is available at http://www.primenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=2756