An e-mail and web security company (EWSC) is a leading provider of e-mail security, web security, and security management appliances protecting customers of all sizes from Internet threats.

EWSC provides worldwide end-user product training through a network of localized training partners. An important part of the educational experience for EWSC's students is the use of lab exercises, which were run remotely on hardware that was maintained by EWSC's network of partners in their home countries.

EWSC experienced a number of problems including:

• Inconsistent delivery of the labs from session to session.
• Unreliable access to labs, including bandwidth and latency issues on both the client side and server side.
• Difficulties with partners keeping up with EWSC software releases.
• Inconsistent technology platforms across the partners to support and deliver the solution to customers.

EWSC's remote lab training solution needed more consistency, better quality control, and more scalability. EWSC needed a new solution to address these issues and to support their long term sales and revenue projections.

EWSC turned to us and our well known remote lab solutions that annually produce more than 2,700 lab sessions and serve more than 25,000 students. EWSC was impressed by the speed with which we developed a proof of concept solution, that allowed for the flexibility, scalability, and consistent deliveries that EWSC needed. EWSC's training is delivered in at least 17 countries so all lab equipment would be centrally located at our U.S. facility that provides a state-of-art, high availability infrastructure for the student. We would need to ensure bandwidth and latency at each remote location would support the remote lab delivery. Each location would need to be certified via speed tests against the remote lab facility in the US to ensure there weren't issues with the foreign sites. If a facility could not be certified, EWSC was willing to move their classroom to a facility that could be certified to ensure high quality.

There were three other key aspects of our remote lab solution that benefited EWSC. The remote lab solution was flexible enough so that it could be modified to the client's wishes without compromising security. The pod-based structure allowed for scalability in the solution, whereas a lab kit structure would not. Finally, the labs provide two ways to access the solution, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) that provides a remote desktop to the student via a graphical display without extending the network out or HTTPS via Tarantella provides the same graphical display via a browser.

The EWSC server farm has nearly tripled in size in the first two years and has had over 450 sessions. In the past year, there has been an average of two sessions per day, with 13 students per session. This represents a 22% increase in total sessions run, all supported without EWSC increasing its staff or lowering its lab quality.