Springfield Schools Select KEMP Load Balancers to Gain High Availability and Ease Server Congestion

YAPHANK, N.Y., Nov. 30, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- KEMP Technologies today announced that the Springfield public school system in Massachusetts has implemented KEMP LoadMasters in its datacenters. Delivering high availability for web-based applications, the application delivery controllers (ADC) and server load balancers optimize and seamlessly distribute web traffic across servers. With KEMP's load balancers, the school system is able to assure high availability and avoid congestion associated with accessing its new web-based student information system during such times as report-card day, when thousands of parents would require access.

For the new school year, the district has implemented PowerSchool Management, the school's first web-based student information system with all files now accessible from a centralized and online database. While implementing the new automated online system, Springfield's goal was also to consolidate its server count and consequently needed an application delivery solution that enabled it to reduce server numbers while maintaining improved performance and availability. With the new server configuration, hardware load balancing was a necessity for the school system and Springfield chose KEMP's LoadMaster 5500 application delivery controllers.

"In making a selection, we examined a large number of load balancers and then narrowed the selection down to KEMP and another vendor, F5. Our final selection on KEMP's LoadMaster was due to the combination of easy-to-use features and pricing, which wasn't matched by any other vendor," notes Benjamin Wilson, Springfield Technology Operations Manager. "With the KEMP LoadMasters in place," Wilson adds, "we were expecting a user friendly experience, but we were even more surprised just how easy they were to use and are very pleased with the product's ability to scale to our future needs."

The LoadMaster 5500 intelligently and efficiently distributes user traffic and offloads and accelerates Layer 7 applications, such as SSL security and content, to optimize web and application servers, ensuring the best experience possible across all users.  The 5500 provides 99.999 percent high-availability, thereby removing the server load balancer as a single point of failure. The LoadMaster also simplifies the management of networked resources and accelerates user access to diverse servers, content and transaction-based systems.

More details on the Springfield deployment of KEMP load balancers are available in a case study on the website, http://www.kemptechnologies.com.

About KEMP Technologies

KEMP Technologies is a leader in affordable server load balancer appliances and application delivery controllers tailored to meet the needs of businesses that rely on the Internet for e-commerce and business-critical applications. KEMP helps companies rapidly grow their business with 24/7 high-availability, better web infrastructure performance, scalability and secure operations -- while streamlining IT costs.

Thousands of KEMP LoadMaster products are in use today to improve customer satisfaction by accelerating user access to business-critical web applications. Managed service providers also rely upon KEMP products to enable fast time-to-market and cost-effective operations for new and existing managed services.

KEMP's highly affordable LoadMaster products include Layers 4-7 load balancing, content switching and server persistence, SSL offload/acceleration, WTS load balancing and persistence with Session Directory integration, and application front-end capabilities (caching, compression, intrusion prevention system), plus one full year of product support -- delivering industry leading price/performance value.

The company is headquartered in Yaphank, New York. For more information, visit www.KEMPtechnologies.com, or call us at 631-345-5292.

Application delivery solutions are known as application delivery controllers (ADC), server load balancers (SLB), application front-end devices (AFE), web switches, content switches and application switches.

SOURCE KEMP Technologies