When Western Financial Group, a Canadian banking and insurance firm, decided to abandon its application delivery infrastructure, it wasn't because the system wasn't working. Doug Bennett, Western's IT manager for networking and infrastructure, believed the carrier needed a simpler, less expensive system to operate that would benefit the brokers who sell Western's life/health insurance products.

"Cost was the biggest driver for us," says Bennett. "We were paying a lot of money for licensing, and we weren't taking advantage of the full-blown presentation server [that was] offered."

Western was familiar with Ericom Software, a provider of enterprisewide application access solutions, through the vendor's banking services. Bennett and his senior technical person attended a conference and sat in on presentations by Ericom. "Everything looked good, and we went from there," says Bennett.