Desjardins Group has sped the delivery of data for key Web applications throughout some of the more remote locations of its 1,500 points of service, without the cost of adding bandwidth to the network.

Based in Quebec, Desjardins Group is the largest integrated cooperative in Canada, with locations in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and New Brunswick. But managing such a geographically spread out network from a central location posed challenges, particularly in locations with bandwidth restraints.

“If we bought a package, sometimes we had to ask people to customize what they were sending to our branches with low bandwith,” said Josée Corriveau, application infrastructure and architecture manager with Desjardins Group, noting that some branches had bandwidth of 56 kbps, compared to 256 kbps for more urban locations. “If they had many graphics to send, we would ask them to change the way the application was built.”

Desjardins had a homegrown Web compression and prioritization engine that had been built in 1998, but as the Web has progressed significantly since then, the engine was beginning to reach its evolutionary limits. Having undergone the process of building their own Web compression/prioritization engine in the past, the company had a good understanding of what it needed, but it was also aware of its limitations.

“A company that builds a proxy server has to maintain its agility to change and evolve,” Corriveau said. “This is not our business. We are a financial institution. We want to be agile on line of product, not on infrastructure development specific to proxy servers.”

When the firm selected the Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2004 after a review of competing products in the market, it had very specific architecture specifications and Web compression requirements.

“Some of the specifications that we gave to Microsoft would never have been developed by Desjardins. Technology evolves quickly and we wouldn’t have the ability to evolve before the market moved past us,” Corriveau said. For example, ISA Server improves not just performance but also security, as an advanced application-layer firewall and virtual private network (VPN) solution. Desjardins Group probably would not have had the resources to deploy secure socket layer (SSL) bridging technology for security had it built a solution on its own, Corriveau said.

ISA Server can prioritize HTTP and HTTPS traffic by URL or IP address to provide better response time when the network is congested. The firm uses this functionality to rank the use of applications by the branches via the Intranet as a top priority as opposed to accessing a Web site that might just be informational. In addition, in certain regions, certain business needs or services may be stronger than in others, based on the different rules or operating procedures in different provinces. Though decisions about traffic prioritization are made centrally, the firm has the ability to prioritize traffic differently for different branches based on their locations or specific business needs.

In addition to these features, the firm saved significantly by avoiding the cost of paying for bandwidth, and it is well-positioned for further growth.

As some of the applications that would run through the server are essential, after finalizing the architecture plan with Microsoft, Desjardins Group took extreme care in testing before deployment. The firm had requested that beginning in June of 2005 Microsoft would develop and send portions of the architecture every two weeks for Desjardins Group to test on its internal applications.

For its initial implementation, Desjardins Group picked three internal applications, all of which were slow at the user interface and more costly to the branch, to be deployed throughout the network by the new server. It set a careful path of redeploying the applications through the ISA Server by June of 2006.

“We wanted to change it very slowly so that it wouldn’t disturb any other branch functions in the process,” Corriveau said.

The rollout has been successful. Measurements have showed the ISA server has cut the response times for users to access critical internal application. The firm is presently in the process of expanding the ISA Server for use with authorized Web sites.

“Statistically the response time to obtain a page from an application is faster,” said Corriveau.