GPSJ WINTER 2023 2024 LATEST - Flipbook - Page 32
GPSJ
BRIDGEWORKS
Bridgeworks accelerates networking
communications with another win at
The SDC Awards 2023
Collecting their award (left to right)
are Antony Reynolds - VP and
Global Channels Leader, Pippa
Hodgson of Bridgeworks, David
Trossell - CEO and CTO of
Bridgeworks, and Lead Jo
Lymington-based WAN Acceleration
firm Bridgeworks has done it again.
The company has been awarded
the accolade of Networking
Communications Project of the
Year at the SDC Awards 2023,
after having also being a finalist
in Computing’s Cloud Excellence
Awards, and in the UK IT Industry
Awards. This is adding to the
company’s award for the Data
Centre ICT Networking Innovation of
the Year at the DCS Awards 2023,
which it has won consecutively on
several occasions previously.
Bridgeworks patented artificial
intelligence (AI) and machine learning
(ML) technologies accelerate the
performance and efficiency of
organisations’ existing technologies
across their Wide Area Networks
(WANs). Bridgeworks PORTrockIT
WAN Acceleration dramatically
improves data throughput up to
98% of bandwidth – regardless of
distance.
David Trossell, CEO and CTO, of
Bridgeworks Ltd, commented after
the award win: “It’s such a great
pleasure to be awarded and to be
recognised by the IT industry for
the unique work we do, insofar as
mitigating the effects of latency and
packet loss with WAN transmission.
Our technology demonstrates that
artificial intelligence and machine
learning can be a force for good –
particularly in healthcare, government
and public sector more widely where
large volumes of data often need to
be transferred.”
National Institutes of Health
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This includes the National Institutes
of Health (NIH) in the US. WAN
Acceleration powers the National
Institutes of Health’s global data
transfer requirements at the U.S
Department of Health and Human
Services. It rates as the world’s
largest biomedical research
agency. The National Institutes
of Health has gone from never
being able to achieve the required
disaster recovery replication
between datacentres, to be able to
consistently meet their demanding
requirements.
The NIH was struggling to able to
address this issue for a couple of
years. NetApp and Aspera couldn’t
achieve this reliably . Bridgeworks
was brought in to conduct a quick
proof of concept (POC) that took a
couple of days to set it up, and then
that was it. The difference between
running a NetApp Snap Mirror
replication across two machines
within the same datacentre and
between the two machines
separated across two datacentres
2,000 miles apart over a 10Gb WAN
was just 6 MB/s.
The savings come not only come
from the time reduction in replicating
their data, but also in the confidence
they now have in protecting their
data. Bridgeworks has also helped
NIH to resolve a number of network
infrastructure issues that had
plagued them for a number of years.
Although very successful, we can’t
fully disclose the results into the
public domain. Yet, it is a substantial
multi-million US dollar contract.
Moreover, US-based company, CVS
Caremark, connected two virtual
tape libraries over 2,860 miles at
full WAN bandwidth, and achieved
a performance gain of 95 times the
unaccelerated performance.
Maximise bandwidth
Steven Umbehocker (SU), CEO
and CTO of OSNEXUS Corporation
further explains why being able
to mitigate latency and package,
as well as having the ability to
maximise bandwidth, is important to
organisations that are accelerating
their adoption of hybrid cloud
strategies: “This can be in the
form of object storage for backup
and disaster recovery sites, which
all puts a greater importance on
the efficient use of the WAN. This
is important across all sectors.
However, it is especially important
in sectors such as healthcare to
protect data like PACS images.”
Umbehocker’s company was
one of the key case studies to
Bridgeworks’ award entries.
He particularly feels that WAN
Acceleration is critical to improving
Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) in
an environment where organisations
have to take cyber-security and data
protection compliance very seriously.
He says it’s imperative to have
adequate WAN bandwidth to store
data quickly, and to restore it when
it’s needed – particularly in a disaster
recovery situation. This is the case
whether caused by humankind or
by natural disaster. Efficient remote
replication to disaster recovery sites
also depends on it.
OSNexus is also seeing increase
demand for metro clusters, where
the storage is distributed across
multiple sites to achieve zero
downtime in the event of a site
outage. Umbehocker adds:
“That’s only possible when the
latency is low enough to provide
sufficient and adequate performance
for the workloads. PORTrockIT
solves these latency issues so
that metro clusters and DR sites
can be deployed across a much
larger geographic area. If you have
an earthquake in one zone, that
larger metro cluster offers benefits.
You can avoid downtime, enabling
organisations to link their disparate
sites together. There is much latency
between New York and Tokyo,
and so you need something like
PORTrockIT to mitigate latency.”
With high latency and packet
loss, he explains that data transfers
are delayed and may need to
be present, which reduces
performance – the transfer rate.
WANs are typically spanning
portions of the public internet and/
or shared dark fibre infrastructure
that IT organisations don’t have
much control over, and simply
upping bandwidth doesn’t address
the latency issues. A different
approach is required to boost
WAN performance - designed to
specifically address inherent latency
issues and packet loss.
Successful year
As recently highlighted in GPSJ, this
year has been a successful year for
Bridgeworks. It saw the company
GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC SECTOR JOURNAL WINTER 2023/2024
travelling to the British Embassy in
Washington DC to participate in a
Thought Leadership AI programme
seminar and reception. A select
number of British companies were
invited to showcase their artificial
intelligence (AI) and zero trust
architecture (ZTA) solutions. The
welcoming speech was delivered
by Jamie Eykyn, Chairman of
Bridgeworks.
In his speech in Washington,
he said: “The world of technology
has advanced immeasurably in
the 50 years since I was involved
developing digital ticketing systems.
From point solutions to specific
problems, to integrated management
systems. Nowadays, there’s also
the deployment of advanced AI
and cloud-based high-speed
communications and compute, and
the ability to co-ordinate a multitude
of activities from a bewildering
number of data collection points in
virtual real-time across - for example
- a battlefield.” WAN Acceleration is
therefore highly flexible.
For years David Trossell has
supported for the promotion of
women in technology by backing
Brockenhurst College’s STEM
Awards. More to the point, with
regard to the SDC Awards, he
stepped aside to give the limelight
to Pippa Hodgson, a software
development engineer who works
as part of Bridgeworks’ research
and development team. Trossell
concludes by wishing her and
everyone else a happy and
prosperous new year in 2024.
No doubt more awards, more award
wins and more successful projects
will be in the offing then.