CASE STUDY

ZumtobelRiverbed Technology helps lighting company improve application performance andnetwork visibility

The Zumtobel Group is a global player in the lighting industry, and provides professional lightingsolutions, luminaires, lighting management, lighting components and LED-modules for indoor andoutdoor applications. It has around 120 offices and production facilities around the world, includingthe US, Europe, Australia and China, and employs almost 8000 people. It revenues are approximately$1.3 billion.

Challenge: To find intelligent and cost effective solutions for improving applicationperformance and monitoring network activity

Zumtobel had centralized its applications to its data center in Austria, in order to improve datamanagement, efficiency and security. However, over time the IT department received complaints

from users trying to access key applicationssuch as SAP and email, over the wide areanetwork (WAN).

“We were receiving an increasing number ofreports regarding the poor performance ofour applications, especially from employeesbased at remote sites, such as in China andAustralia. Users were telling us that it wastaking up to 30 minutes for an email toarrive, or that the hour glass icon, which

denotes that a file or program is still opening, would be constantly running whilst trying to conducta financial transaction in SAP,” explains Tom Brady, chief information officer at Zumtobel.

The issue around application performance created additional pressures, as Brady recounts, “Some ofour business units were trying to build their own local networks as a solution to the problem of slow-running applications. I wanted to avoid that and keep the one corporate network.

“Resolving these issues meant adopting a bold strategy. We wanted to put a project in place thatwould proactively resolve the problem rather than just deal with individual issues as they werearriving. We needed an intelligent solution.”

Solution: Riverbed Steelhead appliances improve application performance, whileRiverbed Cascade provides high network visibility

Zumtobel conducted a consultation exercise with its IT outsource partner and decided that a WANoptimization solution provided the best option for improving application performance over theWAN. “We didn’t want to simply purchase additional bandwidth,” says Brady, “because it’s anexpensive option, and bandwidth can become fully utilized very quickly. Instead we wanted asophisticated solution that would enable us to prioritize traffic and cache regularly used files. Thiswould not have been possible with just a bandwidth upgrade.”

WAN optimization technologies were evaluated from several companies including RiverbedTechnology, Blue Coat, Juniper and Cisco. The Riverbed® Steelhead® appliances provided the bestresults and Zumtobel has now deployed 90 Steelhead appliances at many of its sites. Zumtobel hasalso installed the Riverbed Central Management Console (CMC) at its data center. Riverbed CMCsimplifies the process of deploying andmanaging Steelhead appliances, making iteasy to configure, monitor, and upgradegroups of Steelhead appliances through asingle web-based interface.

After deploying the Steelhead appliances,Zumtobel decided to add Riverbed Cascade® to its network infrastructure. Cascade providesapplication-aware network performance management that enables end-to-end visibility into theperformance of critical business applications. This provides network managers with proactive alertingand robust network troubleshooting.

“I wanted to use the bandwidthintelligently, and WAN optimization

enables me to do things like prioritizetraffic and cache regularly used files,which I couldn’t have done by just

upgrading the bandwidth.”

“Within the first hour of Riverbed goinglive, you could see and feel theimprovement in performance.”

IN BRIEF

Industry

»Manufacturing

Challenge

» Employees unable to access documentsover the WAN which negatively impactedemployee performance

» Unable to measure, monitor or resolvenetwork issues

Solution

» 90 Riverbed Steelhead appliances

» Riverbed Central Management Console

» Riverbed Cascade

Benefits

» Significant improvement in applicationperformance

» Employee productivity improved

» Network monitoring tool enablesproactive alert system and robust networktroubleshooting

Zumtobel deployed Cascade following an internal sales efficiency project, which identified thecompany’s IT system as a possible bottleneck in end-to-end sales transactions. “The Steelheadappliances had made a significant impact on application performance, but our IT system was notperforming as well as we would have liked,” says Brady. “The problem was that we had nothing tomeasure or interrogate to help us discover why a certain transaction was slow – was it something to dowith the network, or a PC or some code in an application? The Steelhead appliances provided us with alot of useful statistics on network activity, but we wanted to go even deeper. That’s why we choseRiverbed Cascade.” Zumtobel has deployed three Cascade appliances across their organization, which isused in conjunction with other monitoring tools to understand the company’s network traffic.

Benefits: Immediate improvement in application performance, increased employeeproductivity, higher network visibility and fast resolution of network issues

The effect of deploying Steelhead appliances was immediate, as Brady recalls, “A colleague at one ofour offices in Belgium could see an improvement in application performance within an hour of theRiverbed appliance going live. Positive feedback from users who have experienced the pain of poorapplication performance is a real indication of the improvements achieved. Emails which used totake minutes to arrive over the network are now being sent and received in near real-time, andtransactions are completed much more quickly. All this has helped to improve employeeproductivity. I’ve also noticed that I now receive very few complaints, and the conversation aboutsetting up a local infrastructure has died down as a result of the benefits brought by Riverbed.”

The benefits of Cascade became apparent when employees at various branch offices complainedabout –the length of time taken to open an application like Microsoft Outlook. It was taking up to30 minutes to upload, after initiallyswitching on a PC. At the same time,employees at a Swiss office complainedthat all applications were performing atreduced speeds. “When something likethis happens, you look for the obvioussources of the problem, but we couldn’tfind the cause using the normalmethods,” says Fritz Schabus, head ofZumtobel Group IT infrastructure.

However, by using Cascade to analyse network traffic, the network technicians quickly identified veryhigh volumes of network traffic between one of the Austrian offices and an office in Switzerland.Schabus explains, “We knew that there shouldn’t be any traffic between them and then we saw thatmost of the traffic was being sent from clients [employee PCs] to a domain controller at the Swissoffice.” The domain controller is a server that handles security authentication – one of its key roles isauthorizing network log-on. For some reason, many clients were using the Swiss-based domaincontroller for network authentication, rather than their local domain controller. The result wasgreatly extended boot-up times and network congestion at the Swiss office.

Schabus concludes, “Once we had identified the problem, it was soon resolved. However, unless youhave the data to drill down into, solving such issues can be very difficult on a complex network likeours. Cascade made it very easy. As a result of re-directing traffic to local domain controllers, boot-uptimes have been boosted by up to a factor of six, while network bandwidth has greatly increased atour Swiss office.”

About RiverbedRiverbed delivers performance for theglobally connected enterprise. WithRiverbed, enterprises can successfully andintelligently implement strategic initiativessuch as virtualization, consolidation, cloudcomputing, and disaster recovery withoutfear of compromising performance. By givingenterprises the platform they need tounderstand, optimize and consolidate theirIT, Riverbed helps enterprises to build a fast,fluid and dynamic IT architecture that alignswith the business needs of the organization.Additional information about Riverbed(NASDAQ: RVBD) is available atwww.riverbed.com.

©2012 Riverbed Technology. All rights reserved.Riverbed and any Riverbed product or service name orlogo used herein are trademarks of RiverbedTechnology. All other trademarks used herein belongto their respective owners. The trademarks and logosdisplayed herein may not be used without the priorwritten consent of Riverbed Technology or theirrespective owners.

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CASE STUDY: Zumtobel

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SUMMARY

Zumtobel had centralized applications at its data center in Austria and as aresult employees were experiencing difficulties when it came to accessingapplications over the WAN, with some applications taking minutes to open andrun properly. Zumtobel chose aWAN optimization solution from Riverbed andwith the Steelhead appliances installed application speeds have greatlyimproved. Zumtobel also implemented Riverbed Cascade, which provides highnetwork visibility. Now, the company can resolve many network issues quicklyandmanage network traffic efficiently and effectively.

“Cascade made it very easy. As a result ofre-directing traffic to local domain

controllers, boot-up times have beenboosted by up to a factor of six, while

network bandwidth has greatly increasedat our Swiss office.”