The global leader in WAN Optimization systems, announced on May 22nd that Mary Kay Inc., one of the world's largest direct sellers of skin care and color cosmetics, is standardizing on Packeteer PacketShaper appliances to monitor and manage traffic in a hybrid network supporting both private and public Internet applications.

Mary Kay operates a global business with more than 1.6 Million Independent Beauty Consultants. The company's mission-critical supply chain system, which operates on a private network, gives planning staff near real-time access to materials forecasting activities, production scheduling, inventory management and fulfillment processing, to name a few. The company also hosts its own Web presence, including personalized "sites" for the Independent Beauty Consultants, together handling well over 90% of all orders. The sophisticated system lets Mary Kay maintain a competitive edge by satisfying demand while keeping production and inventory costs under control-no small task considering the company offers more than 200 SKUs.