Aberdeen Report Reveals Companies Leveraging WAN Optimization Improve Applications Performance 1,000+%

Best-in-Class Businesses Average 11X Improvement in Application Response Times & Report Significant Improvements in Bandwidth Utilization and WAN Latency

DENVER, November 6, 2007 - Virtela, the global network solutions company, today announced the availability of a new research report by the Aberdeen Group, a Harte Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS), finding companies that have implemented leading practices in WAN acceleration and optimization achieved a 1,158% average improvement in response times for business critical applications.

Notably, one third of enterprises surveyed are using managed services or on-demand solutions to exploit the benefits of WAN acceleration and optimization.

The new report, "Optimizing WAN for Application Acceleration", sponsored by Virtela, underscores the need for a managed approach to WAN optimization that can accelerate implementation and the well-documented benefits of these technologies. These benefits include an 87% average improvement in bandwidth utilization, according to the report, with 100% of respondents also noting significant decreases in WAN latency.

"The best way for these organizations to find the optimal balance between application performance and network cost is to address the full lifecycle of network performance management by developing capabilities for monitoring, optimizing, controlling and transforming WANs", said Bojan Simic, research analyst at Aberdeen Group and author of the report. "This speaks directly to the value of a managed network services approach, especially for companies not in a position to invest the sizable time and resources required to achieve best practices."

Leveraging Virtela's WAN acceleration services and expertise, companies can maximize the use of their existing network resources, avoid adding infrastructure and IT staff, significantly improve bandwidth performance and boost productivity in a global environment. Virtela's Accelerated WAN Service - the industry's first managed WAN acceleration and optimization service available as a standardized product offering on a global scale - enables enterprises to move their operations and applications anywhere in the world without incurring performance penalties typically associated with 'chatty' applications and large files traversing long distances across the WAN.

According to the new study, best-in-class companies are twice as likely to have policies for prioritization of WAN traffic; twice as likely to have capabilities to centrally manage WAN acceleration appliances; and twice the number of best-in-class companies decreased their bandwidth cost as a percentage of total IT spend. These companies also found that improvement in WAN performance can only be achieved through integration of several different capabilities that allow organizations to monitor, optimize and control their WAN traffic for optimal applications performance.

"Virtela enables companies to easily achieve best-in-class use of technology solutions, in this case through our global network management expertise and experience in all the leading WAN acceleration devices," said Bill Dodds, Virtela's vice president of sales and marketing. "The Aberdeen findings echo what we are seeing firsthand: WAN acceleration has become a top strategic initiative for forward-thinking customers to reduce network complexity, enable global access to applications and converge critical corporate applications."

The Aberdeen report concludes: "The fact that best in class organizations are able to reduce labor costs, costs of bandwidth services, improve customer satisfaction and streamline key business processes should become a tool that network managers could leverage to get buy in from their finance departments to invest more resources in optimizing of their WAN for application acceleration."

For a complimentary copy of the Aberdeen report, please visit: http://virtela.com.gravitatehosting.com/whitepaper_details.aspx?ID=23

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to AberdeenTM for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to www.harte-hanks.com

About Virtela

Virtela Communications Inc. delivers award-winning network and security solutions to many of the world's largest and fastest-growing multinational companies. Currently serving customers across six continents, Virtela's network reach spans more than 190 countries. Virtela's unique Global Service FabricSM offers the foundation for delivering critical applications via the company's acclaimed service methodology, with a services suite that includes MPLS- and IP-based virtual private networks (VPNs), security services, remote monitoring and management of WAN/LAN infrastructure, and converged services (data, video, voice).

Virtela is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with a second Network Operations Center in Mumbai, India. Virtela is a member of Juniper Networks' (Nasdaq: JNPR) Managed Network Solutions Preferred Alliance Program. For more information, please call +1 (720) 475-4000 or visit www.virtela.com.

Media Contact:
Jane Morrissey
Virtela
720.475.4012 (office)
303.808.7671 (mobile)
jmorrissey@virtela.com