Quark Reduces Network Costs and Improves Application Performance With Virtela Global Managed Network Services

DENVER, March 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Virtela, the world's largest independent managed network services company, today announced that Quark Inc. has renewed its contract for global network services with Virtela.  Since migrating to Virtela, Quark has reduced network costs by 30 percent and improved customer satisfaction and retention through better network and application performance.  A leader in publishing for nearly 30 years, Quark provides dynamic publishing solutions for customers around the world.  More than three million people use the company's flagship product, QuarkXPress.  

Before Virtela, Quark was experiencing lackluster global network performance, particularly in Asia, which drove the company to look for a better solution.  "Our customer and product support efforts are run out of Asia, so the dropped circuits and outages absolutely affected our revenue," said Mark Lawler, vice president of information technology at Quark.

Quark selected Virtela for its global reach, multi-provider backbone resiliency and innovative service delivery that enable multinational enterprises to get more out of every network dollar they invest.  Virtela's flexible approach for Quark – a network spanning North America, Europe, Asia and Australia – blends a majority of MPLS connections with DSL VPNs at locations where business-class broadband is most appropriate, resulting in better cost-efficiencies.

"With Virtela, we easily save one-third of our previous network costs and our uptime is much higher," said Lawler. "More valuable than network metrics, however, is the positive impact Virtela has on our customer satisfaction and retention.  You can't acquire and keep customers if your website goes down as they are buying a product or requesting support.  With Virtela, our uptime is much, much higher than it used to be, and we're not losing customers.  There's no question that the performance and reliability of the Virtela network enhances our revenue."

Virtela offers an extensive suite of managed services – including MPLS and IP network, security, remote access, device monitoring and management, and application acceleration – leveraging a unique infrastructure that aggregates and integrates the best local, regional and global networks to offer unparalleled geographic reach. By adding a unique overlay of intelligence that performs optimal routing and automatic failover for customer network traffic, Virtela's multi-carrier Global Service Fabric(SM) gives enterprises an inherently higher performing, more resilient and cost effective alternative than traditional carrier networks. Virtela is the single point of contact for expert design, implementation and 24x7 proactive monitoring and management worldwide.

The Virtela network also supports other critical business systems at Quark, including order management, ERP and financial applications, and development and support.  Ensuring consistent communication is especially critical for development teams around the world who need to share updates, collaborate with functional tools, and create and manage code.

"The strength of the Virtela network has greatly improved our ability to collaborate, especially in the realm of development," continued Lawler.  "Engineering is an expensive labor cost, and in a world where time is money, we can't afford for our developers to lose valuable time collaborating and sharing code."

"We're passionate about partnering with Quark's IT team to manage end-to-end global network services," said Vab Goel, Virtela CEO and partner at Norwest Venture Partners. "Virtela's proven multi-carrier approach can benefit any company looking to improve the performance and customer support of their enterprise network."

About Virtela

Virtela, the world's largest independent managed services company, offers award-winning managed services including MPLS and IP-based Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), Security, Remote Access, and WAN/LAN Device Monitoring and Management, to some of the most competitive multinational companies in the world. Offering services in 190 countries, Virtela integrates and manages best-of-breed service providers through partnerships with 500+ carriers, to address the unique needs of its customers.

Virtela is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with Global Network Operations Centers in Denver, Mumbai, India and Manila, Philippines. For more information, please call +1 (720) 475-4000 or visit www.virtela.net.

About Quark

Quark® Inc. (www.quark.com/en) is a leading provider of publishing software for professional designers, small and mid-sized businesses, and large organizations in more than 160 countries. Two decades ago, our flagship product - QuarkXPress® - changed the course of traditional publishing. For more than 25 years, Quark has built on its knowledge and experience in design and publishing to provide software solutions that support collaborative workflows and automated publishing across multiple channels. Today, Quark is revolutionizing publishing again by setting new standards in XML-based publishing across print, the Web, and digital media as well as by helping owners and employees of small and mid-sized businesses promote their products and services easily, professionally, and affordably. Denver-based Quark Inc. is privately held.

SOURCE Virtela