Routing optimization appliances can be another quick win in thebandwidth category. John Benzinger, vice president of IT forFreeMarkets in Pittsburgh, a hosted sourcing and e-commerce auctionservices provider, says paying less than $100,000 for one such devicefrom RouteScience Technologies yielded substantial cost savings, andmore important, performance benefits.

The appliance, which identifies optimal network paths for returnpacket traffic back to customers, was easy to install and yielded amajor improvement in page display times. "We had it installed withintwo days and were immediately seeing benefits," Benzinger says. "Wewouldn't have been able to provide the same level of service withoutit, and we also would have had to put more engineers on diagnosing enduser problems."

Both Tyler and Benzinger advise CIOs to test bandwidth optimizationsolutions thoroughly before deploying them, however. The best of thesedevices can be put in listen-only mode so that staffers can evaluatetheir compression and routing recommendations, and likely bandwidthsavings, before anything gets put into production. "Prove it to me. Iwant to experience it," says Tyler.

Fenwick and West's Kesner, who also deployed a Peribit system, hadsimilar advice: "Look under the hood, test it like crazy, and makesure it really works."

Talk About Savings