Radware Enables New York City's Department of Homeless Services to Process Families and Individuals in Need of Shelter More Efficiently
Radware, the leading provider of integrated application delivery solutions for
business-smart networking, announced that New York City's Department of
Homeless Services has deployed AppDirector®, its intelligent application
delivery controller and LinkProof®, a multi-WAN load balancer to ensure
DHS employees - across New York City's five boroughs - have access to
mission-critical applications required to process families and individuals in
need of immediate shelter and public assistance.
In today's slowed economy, the number of individuals and families requesting
temporary shelter has risen. According to DHS' September 2009 census
statistics, New York City boroughs processed nearly 38,000 adults and children
requesting provisional housing. To properly handle each individual case in a
timely manner, DHS' 1800+ processing employees need to have instant access to
applications from DHS' Client Tracking System as well as its home base
and re-housing applications.
To guarantee service efficiency and staff access to sensitive public
assistance information, the agency turned to Radware's application delivery
solutions. Delivering a High Availability (HA) solution, AppDirector uses
global load balancing and proximity-based routing across DHS' 14 borough sites
to dynamically shape incoming and outgoing voice/data application traffic.
Combining this with LinkProof's remote Internet connection management, WAN
optimization and integrated VPN (virtual private network) capabilities, DHS
gains a network solution that has been optimized to avoid network bandwidth
issues across the WAN. As a result, DHS can maximize communications, cut
connectivity costs and remain compliant with city regulations on the amount of
time required to process each individual requesting shelter.
Additionally, since 9/11, DHS has been acknowledged as a key component to New
York City's emergency response solution - as it has the ability and resources
to provide immediate housing in times of emergency. With this designation, DHS
was empowered to create a fail-safe, redundant network, leveraging AppDirector
and LinkProof to ensure business continuity and uninterrupted network access
to borough sites. This is extremely important during emergency situations,
when high-volume traffic could yield network disruptions or connection
failures.
"Our primary goal at DHS is to prevent homelessness wherever possible, and to
provide short-term emergency shelter and re-housing support whenever needed,"
said Valery Dmitriev, chief security officer, DHS. "If one of our sites were
to go down, causing a long period of downtime, we would be at risk for not
facilitating our mission in providing individuals and families with one of
their fundamental necessities for survival - shelter. To us - that's not
acceptable. Working with Radware has given us the assurance that we can
process each family and individual person that walks into a DHS facility - no
questions asked."
DHS worked with CDW Government Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of CDW
Corp. and leading source of Information Technology solutions to
governments and educators, to design and implement its new network
infrastructure. Radware is an essential component of the new network.
"New York City has an aggressive plan to reduce street homelessness and its
shelter population. The DHS' ability to access critical applications at any
time, from any department location, is essential to its success," said Bob
Kirby, CDW-G vice president. "Along with increased network bandwidth and
advanced communications solutions, DHS needed Radware's application
availability solution, which provides caseworkers with continuous access to
information and applications during emergency situations and day-to-day
operations."
In pilot evaluations, DHS quickly learned that AppDirector and LinkProof were
unique- not requiring DHS to change its core routing architecture. The
application delivery solutions seamlessly integrated into DHS' networking
environment, and through simple configuration provided complete application
access and control - enabling applications to be moved from one server to
another - within moments of setup. Offering a multitude of features and
immediate ease-of-use, DHS found AppDirector's functionality included global
load balancing, proximity load balancing and even full routing ability with
advanced protocols like OSPF (Open Shortest Path First). Deploying four
AppDirectors across its two central DHS locations, one being the disaster
recovery site, and 15 LinkProof link load balancers throughout its
comprehensive network, DHS can intelligently route traffic across its Internet
links; ensuring high availability of all connections.
"By using AppDirector and LinkProof, New York City's Department of Homeless
Services is guaranteed full path transaction completion, which enables staff
to always be connected to business-significant applications and Web sites,"
said Myles Moskowitz, Major Accounts Manager, Radware. "We are in the business
of ensuring application delivery assurance - from initial configuration to
everyday usage, and we pride ourselves on the success DHS has experienced with
our load balancing solutions."