Cases Riverbed 2009

CASE STUDIES

Extreme Savings With RiverbedAmassing huge savings with Riverbed WDS solutionsParticularly in difficult economic times, organizations of all sizes strive to streamline costs while leveraging productivity gains. Many companies will evaluate various cost-cutting initiatives in order to weather the storm. However, enterprises need to be careful to pursue cost cutting measures that won’t negatively impact business operations or hinder growth in the long term. The paradox facing CIOs and IT managers is how to control or reduce costs while still providing strategic value for the business.

With wide-area data services (WDS), leading companies can slash network and IT costs while simultaneously improving application performance and business processes. By accelerating applications up to 100x, organizations can easily consolidate their IT infrastructure and minimize bandwidth utilization saving thousands or even millions of dollars annually. WDS can also enable accelerated disaster recovery operations to minimize the impact and cost of downtime while also saving money on idle DR bandwidth links.

Thousands of companies have already achieved the following results:

Site and Server Consolidation – • With WDS, companies can consolidate entire data centers or servers from branch offices without compromising application performance. The LAN-like performance enabled by Riverbed Steelhead products eliminates the trade-off between consolidation and speed. Consolidation becomes a reality – without impacting the productivity of your branch users.

Save money on bandwidth – • By delivering massive capacity throughput increases, Riverbed customers can use a T1 circuit as if it were 20 meg pipe. This allows companies to defer bandwidth upgrades for years saving big dollars on network costs.

Eliminate backup infrastructure and tapes – • Organizations can leverage WDS to backup data over the WAN and eliminate tapes and backup infrastructure in branch offices. This is a hard cost savings and an administrative blessing by no longer having the office manager mix up the incremental and full backup tapes.

Save money on DR - • Most industry analysts estimate that network costs consume approximately 30% of overall DR expenses. By reducing bandwidth usage, IT can outfit DR sites with smaller links for data replication to save on recurring costs.

WAnt to leARn moRe?

Attached are 4 enlightening case studies about very different organizations

that have used WDS to achieve Extreme Savings. These case studies will

show you how to do the same thing to your environment. Your executives

will be impressed when you make the impossible, possible. Let Riverbed

show you how. Think Fast.

CASE STUDY

Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, Ltd.3TB File Server Consolidation Project completed with the Riverbed Steelhead® Appliance

Realizing a cost savings of over 12,000,000 yen per year through WAN optimization, with improved data security and improved availabilityMitsubishi Motors Corporation, Ltd. (“Mitsubishi Motors”) was aiming to further increase its competitive strength by consolidating its information systems at key locations within Japan. As part of this effort, in 2005 they consolidated a total of 50 Windows NT-based file servers (5000 users) at three locations whose hardware maintenance contracts had expired, replacing them with a single EMC Celerra NS series. By introducing the Riverbed Steelhead appliance, they were able to provide end users with performance comparable to that of LAN access and reduce WAN traffic by over 90%. They also strengthened data security, centralized management, enabled a large reduction in TCO, and improved availability.

Issue: Consolidation of Windows NT-Based File Servers Distributed At Three Locations Into One Location Without Loss of PerformanceAt Mitsubishi Motor’s main locations within Japan, namely, the Mizushima factory, the Power Train factory, the passenger car engineering center, and headquarters, a total of about 1000 servers of various types are in operation. Most of them had been intro-

duced and were operated by individual departments, and therefore there was a lot of room for TCO savings. Their consolidation had become a company-wide issue, including items such as unification of management standards and service levels.

Just at that time, during 2005, in three locations in the Kansai region, there were about 50 Windows NT-based file servers whose hardware maintenance contract periods had expired, and the Mitsubishi Motors IT planning department decided to consolidate the servers when they were replaced.

“In our company, the operations management of servers is outsourced, and the main-tenance contract fee depends on the number of servers. So in order to lower the cost, it was necessary to reduce the number of servers by consolidating them. It was also an urgent matter to consolidate the servers in order to enable centralized management. Doing so, we could unify access rights management, which was handled differently in each department, as well as the backup management standards, and thereby strengthen data security,” said IT planning department expert Yasuhiro Nishikawa.

Solution: The Riverbed Steelhead Appliance As it took steps towards server consolidation, the Mitsubishi Motors IT planning department initially worried that inter-regional consolidation using CIFS over a WAN

In BRIEF

Industry

Manufacturing (Automotive) »

Challenges

Reducing the cost of operations »Improving data security »Making the level of service more uniform »

Solution

Riverbed Steelhead Appliance »

Benefits

TCO savings of 1,000,000 yen per month »Access performance comparable to that »of a LAN, through a 90% reduction in WAN traffic

Improved data security through central- »ized management

Improved availability »

The issue was company-wide consolidation, including TCO

reduction, unification of management fundamentals

and service levels.

would not provide satisfactory user performance, so they formulated a plan that included both consolidation between key locations, and separate consolidation at each location. However, after they saw the Riverbed Steelhead appliance at the 2005 Data Storage Expo, they decided to combine the servers at the three key locations in the Kansai region into one. Mr. Nishikawa of the IT planning department explains what happened at that time as follows: “At first we didn’t have high hopes for the results that WAN optimization could produce. However, we borrowed a test machine to try out the Riverbed Steelhead appliance, and when we tried out applications under conditions similar to those of actual usage environments, the performance was superb, and we came away with a whole new perception of it. At that point we decided to unify the servers across key locations.”

However, while consolidating servers across regions with WAN optimization, the Mitsubishi Motors IT planning department still had to provide a service level that met the stringent requirements of end users.

Mr. Nishikawa speaks openly of the difficulties prior to introduction: “WAN-optimized equipment was an unknown technology in our company, so at informational meetings for users, the questions concentrated on the issue of whether performance could really be guaranteed.” In order to answer such criticisms, the IT planning department performed repeated simulations addressing that issue, and what would happen if they performed consolidation using the Riverbed Steelhead appliance. They carefully verified that it would be possible to consolidate using the existing bandwidth. Again, when the actual layout of the Riverbed Steelhead appliance and the server design were decided, the IT planning department, before the fact, conducted a detailed investigation of the number of sessions and the amount of data to be transferred.

CASE STUDY: Mitsubishi Motor Corporation, Ltd.

We decided to use the Riverbed Steelhead appliance,

which enabled consolidated servers with superb

performance.

SITE A

Cisco Switch

Client

Steelhead 3010Steelhead 3010

WAN Router

SITE C

Cisco Switch

Client


WAN Router

DATA CENTER

Cisco Switch

Client


Integrated File Server(EMC Celerra)

WAN Router

SITE B

Cisco Switch

Client


WAN Router

WAN

YASuhIRO nIShIkAWA Expert of IT Planning & Control Dept.Corporate Affairs Office

Mitsubishi Motors Corp.

JunIChI TOMITA IT Planning & Control Dept.

Corporate Affairs Office Mitsubishi Motors Corp.

Mitsubishi Motors Deployment Architecture

This task was given to Mr. Hideo Okada, the chief of the third engineering department in the technology headquarters of MCOR Co., Ltd, who recalls the difficulties of that time as follows: “We investigated the amounts of data on all the file servers at the time, the traffic, and the amount of data transmission, to decide on the specification. This study would decide whether to consolidate servers across locations, so we were very nervous.”

Before using the Riverbed Steelhead appliance, Mitsubishi Motors also did compari-sons against competing products. Along with performance, factors that led to the choice of Riverbed included the wealth of compatible protocols and applications, cost performance and a strong support structure. Junichi Tomita of the IT planning department, who was responsible for the planning, described an episode in which “a product competing with Riverbed was unable to open some application files that are essential to our company.”

In this way, after various investigations, the final specification put together by Mitsubishi Motors was to consolidate about 50 Windows NT-based file servers (3.5 TB) at three key locations in the Kansai region into a single EMC Celerra NS series NAS, and use the existing wide-area network (10 to 60 Mbps) to establish a CIFS connection between the key locations via the Riverbed Steelhead appliance. Mitsubishi Motors uses two SH5010 machines, four SH3010 machines, and two SH1020 machines.

Transition work on file servers at each location began in May 2006, and by November 2006, all the data at said locations was stored in the EMC Celerra NS series.

Since that time, minor adjustments have been made, such as in the settings for admin-istrative rights that are not suited to use the increased speed provided by the Steelhead appliance, individual processing of certain high volume files, and the transition to daily business operation has been implemented without problem.

Effect: Major Reduction in TCO, Enhanced Data Security, and Improved AvailabilityAt Mitsubishi Motors, now using the Riverbed Steelhead appliance to consolidate servers across regions, they have been able to achieve their initial goals, namely, a great reduction in application cost, improved data security through centralized management, and a great improvement in availability.

“With the TCO conversion, we are saving over 1,000,000 yen per month, and in addition, centralized management has strengthened data security. Service levels, which previously varied at each location, have also improved,” said Mr. Nishikawa.

Also, by using an active standby redundant structure in which two Steelhead appliances are continuously in operation, reliability has greatly improved. Together with the next-generation consolidated storage environment, high availability has been realized.

“In the environment prior to consolidation, there were applications that, separately from the file servers, used CIFS, so WAN access had become heavy, and we were asked whether that situation could be improved. Now, with consolidation that uses the Steelhead appliance, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in speed. We haven’t researched each user individually, but it appears that user satisfaction in general is extremely high,” noted Mr. Nishikawa.

With the TCO conversion, operating costs have reduced by 1,000,000 yen or more per

month. Also, performance comparable to that of LAn access

was achieved due to a 90% reduction in WAn traffic.

hIdEO OkAdA Okazaki System Department,

MMC COMPUTER RESEARCH, LTD.

2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009

About RiverbedRiverbed Technology is the IT infrastructure performance company. The Riverbed family of wide area network (WAN) optimization solutions liberates businesses from common IT constraints by increasing application performance, enabling consolidation, and providing enterprise-wide network and application visibility – all while eliminating the need to increase bandwidth, storage or servers. Thousands of companies with distributed operations use Riverbed to make their IT infrastructure faster, less expensive and more responsive. Additional information about Riverbed (NASDAQ: RVBD) is available at www.riverbed.com

Riverbed Technology199 Fremont StreetSan Francisco, CA 94105Tel: +1 415 247 8800Fax: +1 415 247 8801www.riverbed.com

Riverbed Technology Pte. Ltd.391A Orchard Road #22-06/10Ngee Ann City Tower ASingapore 238873Tel: +65 6508-7400

Riverbed Technology Ltd. Farley Hall, London RoadBinfieldBracknellBerks RG42 4EUTel: +44 (0) 1344 401900

Riverbed Technology K.K.Shiba-Koen Plaza Building 9F3-6-9, Shiba, Minato-kuTokyo, Japan 105-0014Tel: +81 3 5419 1990

© 2009 Riverbed Technology. All rights reserved. Portions of Riverbed’s products are protected under Riverbed patents, as well as patents pending. Riverbed Technology, Riverbed, Steelhead, RiOS, Interceptor, Think Fast, the Riverbed logo, Mazu, Profiler, Atlas and Cascade are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riverbed Technology All other trademarks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

CS-MSB013109

CASE STUDY: Mitsubishi Motor Corporation, Ltd.

Future Prospects: Further Server Consolidation Involving Overseas Locations and the Addition of ApplicationsWith the successful completion of this consolidation project using the Riverbed Steelhead appliance, the Mitsubishi Motors IT planning department has great confidence in server consolidation across regions. Mr. Tomita, who worked on this project, gave a positive analysis: “There are several minor issues, but overall, the choice of server consolidation with the Riverbed Steelhead appliance was a good one. We plan to continue with this method in carrying out future server consolidation.”

The Mitsubishi Motors IT planning department has introduced the Riverbed Steelhead appliance into the environment for server consolidation at headquarters, which had been started before the server consolidation across the three key locations in the Kansai region. In addition, it is now looking into using the same method for further consolidation, such as for CAD applications and mail servers that are currently running separately within each location, and file servers at key overseas locations.

The Riverbed Steelhead appliance is set to play an ever-increasing role in providing a more efficient IT strategy for Mitsubishi Motors.

CASE STUDY

PsomasPsomas Achieves Global Work-Sharing and Accelerates the Mobile Worker with Riverbed® Steelhead® ProductsPsomas is a leading consulting engineering firm offering services for private companies and government agencies in the water transportation and land development markets.

Psomas is ranked nationally as one of Engineering News Record’s (ENR’s) Top Engineering Firms. They have achieved an award-winning reputation for innovation, creativity, and cutting-edge technical expertise. The cornerstone of their business approach is to focus on clients’ long-term needs and guide strategic growth to meet those needs. Founded in 1946, Psomas has grown into a full-service consulting firm with over 800 employees. Their professional staff is at the forefront of technology, focusing on the technologies that support clients’ success.

Psomas has 20 offices throughout the west as well as an office in Nogales, Mexico.

Challenge: Sharing Work Across Offices in a High-growth EnvironmentAs a high-growth firm, Psomas needed to accelerate application performance to accom-modate a changing set of demands from the business as well as employees. “The problem was three fold,” said Chris Pinckney, Chief Information Officer at Psomas. “We needed to overcome frustrating delays that were hindering project collaboration and work sharing, avoid mishaps with miscommunication among employees, and at the same time deploy technology that could keep up with our pace of growth.”

Psomas regularly uses 300-500 MB AutoCAD and Bentley MicroStation CAD files, and must share those files among offices and mobile workers. “File sharing was a real challenge. Our files were so large that it wasn’t feasible to send them back and forth during the day with changes.” Pinckney recalled, “Offices would keep their own copy of the file to work with, but that led to multiple copies of the same file that were out of sync. Field crews would often have to go back to the office in order to get updated files or, worse, would be working off of old data. We needed to have a system where all users could have access to the freshest data and didn’t have to worry about whether they had the most up-to-date version of the file.”

In addition, Psomas has been experiencing 20% per year growth, putting a priority on sharing work with new offices. But each new office added a significant strain on its existing network infrastructure. “Bringing new offices online was a significant hurdle. We needed to do it fast and effectively. We’ve started implementing offshore facilities in Mexico and outsourcing to a company in the Philippines. We wanted to ensure that offices, no matter where we establish them in the world, can work in real-time.”

Solution: Riverbed Steelhead Products Make All Employees Feel Local After considering bandwidth upgrades and point products, Pinckney decided to go with the Riverbed Steelhead solution. He noted that the decision was based on actual test results.

in bRief

industry

Engineering»»

Challenges

Enable collaboration among remote »»offices, field crews, and home-based workers

Support steady company expansion, off-»»shoring, and changes in the workforce

Centralize and consolidate servers into »»the data center

Solution

One Steelhead appliance was deployed »»in each existing office

One Steelhead appliance will be »»deployed in each future branch office

Steelhead Mobile deployed on laptops »»for home workers, field crews, and very small offices

benefits

$1,000,000 saved annually by reclaiming »»¼ hour per engineer daily

File and email servers centralized, »»improving data freshness and decreasing maintenance costs

Mobile workforce is integrated more »»effectively into company operations

CASE STUDY: Psomas

2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009






© 2009 Riverbed Technology. All rights reserved. Portions of Riverbed’s products are protected under Riverbed patents, as well as patents pending. Riverbed Technology, Riverbed, Steelhead, RiOS, Interceptor, Think Fast, the Riverbed logo, Mazu, Profiler, and Cascade are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riverbed Technology All other trademarks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

“When we tried file sharing using Steelhead appliances, the results were dramatic. Transfers for a completely new 325 MB file, which were infeasible before, took just over 14 minutes with a Steelhead appliance. Transfers for an edited file took about 2 minutes, the same amount of time that it takes us to access the file on a LAN.”

Following these results, Pinckney decided to deploy Steelhead appliances in all offices. “Results were pretty dramatic in our branch offices. So when our organization started becoming more mobile, we knew we should consider using Steelhead Mobile for our out-of-office applications as well. Now we get the same kinds of results whether it’s the field crews out at job sites, home-based workers that need to collaborate with office staff or small offices where we couldn’t put an appliance in place.”

Benefits: Steelheads Appliances and Steelhead Mobile Enable Work Sharing and Data ConsolidationPsomas has seen impressive results from deploying Steelhead products. “With Riverbed Steelhead products deployed worldwide, our employees can now share work and leverage resources wherever they happen to be. Employees can now quickly download shared files, upload changes, and collaborate effectively. We’ve heard things from our remote workforce such as, ‘I feel like I’m part of the team again.’” Pinckney also noted huge productivity gains. “Estimating just ¼ billable hour saved per employee per day, Psomas has saved over $1 million in a year with the Riverbed Steelhead solution. When you add in the fact that new offices can immediately be productive by taking on tasks from other offices, the value of this product is staggering.” Overworked offices can offload tasks to other offices, and new offices can take on projects from established offices until they generate their own workload.

CS-PSO03109

More than 25x faster

0 30 60 90 120 150 180 210 240 270 300

Without Steelhead

FirstSteelhead Operation

SubsequentSteelhead Operation

0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250

WithoutSteelhead

FirstSteelhead Operation

SubsequentSteelhead Operation

Too long to test

Time improvement of initial Replication of 30Mb of PPT file – Time to Complete (in seconds)

Time improvement of initial Replication of 48Mb file over 3MbPS DSL – Time to Complete (in seconds)

CASE STUDY

Allen MatkinsRiverbed® Steelhead® Appliances Enable Global Collaboration for Law Firm

The Allen Matkins law firm (www.allenmatkins.com) has been focused on providing quality, reputable counsel for more than 25 years. Allen Matkins brings creative solutions to complex issues, turning problems into opportunities. With more than 200 lawyers situated in five major business centers in California, their practice is not merely statewide, but national and international in scope. The Firm has developed seventeen highly successful practice areas including Corporate and Securities, Litigation, Real Estate, and Technology.

Allen Matkins’ practice is founded on the belief that the relationship between clients and lawyers is unique and that the best interests of clients are served by long-standing individual relationships and personalized service. One of the top 200 law firms in the US, Allen Matkins regularly receives accolades such as “Best in the West” by California Lawyer, and “Top 50” by Daily Journal.

Challenge: Enabling Collaboration for Inter-Office Client Teams

As a law firm focused on relationships and personalized service, Allen Matkins takes customer demands very seriously. The Firm’s growth during a period of industry consolidation is a result of that focus. But customer demands have been changing rapidly. “Customers now expect the Firm to provide a broad range of expertise, across practice areas,” noted Frank Gillman, Director of Technology for Allen Matkins. “Our Firm must now create inter-office client

teams that leverage specialized staff in different offices in order to provide the best possible client service.”

“We needed our wide area network to be an enabler for the way our attorneys work,” commented Gillman. “But with data distributed across offices and network

latency impeding access, attorneys spent significant amounts of time finding and accessing information.” Critical applications for Allen Matkins included Interaction CRM by LexisNexis, and DOCS Open document management by Hummingbird.

Litigation case files, upwards of 60 megabytes, could take more than 20 minutes to download. If an attorney made any edits to the file, the changes would take another 20 minutes to upload. Attorneys would become frustrated and complain, and at the same time they would have to work longer in order to meet their required billable hours.

In addition, the existing data architecture required replicated information located in each office to be synchronized nightly. That scenario eased attorneys’ access to local information, but introduced challenges for both collaboration and IT management.

In BRIEF

Industry

Professional Services (Legal)»»

Challenges

Improve client service by centralizing »»information and documents to enable corporate-wide access

Enable inter-office client teams to »»effectively collaborate over the wide area network

Eliminate attorney hours wasted on »»frustrating, non-billable tasks

Solution

A Steelhead appliance was deployed in »»each of 6 offices

Benefits

$980,000 in estimated productivity »»gains by eliminating long downloads, tracking down up-to-date information, and use of old information

Centralized CRM makes up-to-date »»customer information usable to all practice groups in real-time

$130,000 in annual bandwidth expenses »»avoided with one-time Steelhead appliance purchase.

“Riverbed is ahead of the competition in its ability to support all of our critical

protocols.”

Solution: Steelhead Appliances Overcome Network Limitations

Gillman, along with senior engineers Clark Snyder and Jay Nash, considered Riverbed Steelhead appliances, but also examined Peribit WAN accelerators (now part of Juniper Networks). Gillman commented, “We also considered adding more bandwidth and hardware, but the annual leasing expenditures made a bandwidth upgrade prohibitive compared to a solution like Riverbed Steelhead appliances.”

In doing due diligence on Riverbed and Peribit (Juniper), Gillman and his team realized that a critical component of a WAN optimization solution was the breadth of protocol support and cross-application support. “Riverbed is ahead of the competition in its ability to support all of our critical protocols. Combined with the raw power of the product to accelerate data transfers using both data reduction and latency optimization, this was the winning solution.”

In addition, Gillman was impressed with the Riverbed sales force. “Before Peribit (Juniper) even met with us, Riverbed had assessed our needs and arranged for a full on-site evaluation. Riverbed effectively pursued our business and ensured that this project would be successful for Allen Matkins.”

Benefits: Better Client Service, Reduced Non-Billable Hours, and Simpler IT Management

Riverbed Steelhead appliances have enabled Allen Matkins’ attorneys to focus on delivering the best possible client experience without enduring frustrating downtime, lost hours, and non-billable overhead. Gillman estimated, “Using the Steelhead solution, we have eliminated more than 20 non-billable hours annually for the average attorney working in a remote office. Now we can provide our high-quality client experience while eliminating behind-the-scenes manual labor by our attorneys. That also translates into an estimated $980,000 in annual productivity gains for Allen Matkins. ”

“Litigation case files, which took more than 22 minutes to download, can now be downloaded in 2.5 minutes for a cold transfer. Edits followed by a transfer across the network

take about 8 seconds. No amount of added bandwidth could do that for us.”

Steelhead appliances have also enabled consolidation of IT infrastructure. Because access to information is now accelerated, critical client data and documentation can be centrally stored at the corporate data center, where all practices can access it. “Because of Steelhead appliances, we

no longer need to maintain as much remote IT infrastructure. We have changed the way we deploy remote infrastructure and back up remote data, for the better,” concluded Gillman.

End users also noticed a difference. Gillman recalled, “When we deployed Steelhead appliances, people noticed something was dramatically different with the network. Riverbed helped eliminate frustration for employees in all our offices, and that leads to a more effective, more enjoyable work environment. Plus, my staff can focus on forward-looking IT projects to keep Allen Matkins ahead of the competition.”

CASE STUDY: Allen Matkins

“Litigation case files which took more than 22 minutes to download

can now be downloaded in 2.5 minutes for a cold transfer. no

amount of added bandwidth could do that for us.”

CoSt CoMpARISon: Steelhead Solution vs Bandwidth Upgrade

Bandwidth Upgrade

Steelhead Solution

Year 1

Equipment $45,000 $69,000

Annual Expenses $165,000 $16,000

Year 2

Annual Expenses $131,000 $16,000

Total (Year 1 + Year 2) $341,000 $101,000

“the raw power of the product to accelerate data transfers,

using both data reduction and latency optimization made it the

winning solution.”

Cost Comparison

Gillman knew that Allen Matkins needed to upgrade its WAN in order to meet the needs of a changing legal environment. While Gillman and his team understood that a bandwidth upgrade alone could not provide the same high performance level as a Steelhead appliance deployment, they knew that a cost comparison would provide more internal support for the Steelhead solution. The team assembled key financial data (see Cost Comparison chart to left) in order to compare the cost of the two solutions for Allen Matkins.

As the chart to the left shows, over the course of just two years, the cost of deploying the Riverbed Steelhead solution would be 70% less expensive than the cost of implementing a bandwidth upgrade. Annual operating costs for the Riverbed Steelhead solution are a staggering 88% less expensive than a bandwidth upgrade.

SUMMARy

Alan Matkins needed to optimize its WAN in order to enable its attorneys to provide better client service. At the same time the Firm aimed to eliminate frustrating, non-billable tasks that were impeding the practice of law.

After reviewing competitive products and bandwidth upgrades, Allen Matkins deployed the Riverbed Steelhead solution in order to overcome latency and bandwidth limitations.

With Steelhead appliances, Allen Matkins’ attorneys have accelerated access to the freshest data, regardless of the attorney’s locations. Collaboration is eased, and non-billable hours are reduced.

“Steelhead appliances have changed the way we deploy

remote infrastructure and back up remote data, for the better.”

2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009







CS-AM031306

CASE STUDY

GeoEngineersRiverbed® Steelhead® Appliances and Equallogic Enable Accelerated, Simplified ReplicationGeoEngineers, Inc., (www.GeoEngineers.com) offers an integrated suite of services for companies looking to build communities, harness and manage the earth’s resources, and move both products and people. The company operates at the intersection of earth science and technology, and calls on expertise in both disciplines to deliver results for clients. Since its founding in 1980, GeoEngineers has successfully completed more than 25,000 projects worldwide for clients in the Energy, Transportation, Water & Natural Resources, Development, and Federal markets. Today GeoEngineers, Inc. has hundreds of experts working locally and across the globe from 15 offices.

Challenge: Enabling Collaboration for Specialists in Different OfficesGeoEngineers, Inc., faced the challenge of enabling their workforce to effectively collaborate over the WAN. “Our employees are very specialized,” noted Courtenay Bernier, Information Technology Manager. “As a result, we have to enable employees to be able to work in real time over the WAN. Our workforce uses a range of applications from CAD, GIS, and Microsoft Office applications, to Exchange Email, SharePoint, and Microsoft CRM”.

“But IT faced the challenge to make sure that employees were getting the performance that they need across this broad range of applications. Our staff often has to work on very large files — hundreds of megabytes — and it is not easy to share those across the WAN. It might take us 2 hours to transfer a typical 720 MB file from one office to another. This amount of time would make it challenging to our employees

to stay productive. In fact, we had even instituted guidelines on file transfers for employees to ease some of the performance issues.”

Bernier continued, “We were also replicating our files from our branch offices to HQ using Microsoft DFS, and we were replicating back to

our EqualLogic iSCSI SAN. The SAN provided us with cost effective, easy to manage centralized storage, and DFS was a simple way to perform replication. The challenge, however, was optimizing DFS over the WAN.”

Solution: Steelhead Appliances Overcome Network LimitationsBernier looked into WAN optimization to solve the challenge of slow replication over the WAN. “We considered the F5 product and the Riverbed Steelhead appliance as well as a few others; however the Steelhead appliance really worked for us. We did extensive testing and the Steelhead appliance really proved itself in our live environment. Working with our reseller, we were able to provision three evaluation devices and integrate them quickly in our network ourselves”.

“The results were pretty impressive. That 720 MB transfer was cut from 2 hours to 10 minutes on the first transfer. Subsequent edits to the file and retransfers were reduced to just 5 seconds. With that type of speed, I knew that our staff would be able to collaborate in real time.”

“At the same time, the Steelhead appliance was optimizing our bandwidth. In fact, although we only had a 3 Mbps connection in our data center, the Steelhead appliance was enabling us to get up to a virtual 155 Mbps,” continued Bernier, “On average we see a 3.4x to 4x increase in our WAN capacity with no additional investment in actual physical capacity.”

In BRIEF

Industry

Professional Services »»(Environmental Consulting )

Challenges

Enable employees with different »»specialties to collaborate from different offices

Allow IT to keep pace with strategic »»acquisitions and staff growth

Provide faster file replication capabilities»»Control bandwidth costs»»

Solution

A Steelhead appliance was deployed in »»each of 15 offices

Benefits

Real-time collaboration on files becomes »»a reality

Significant reduction in data replication »»times — in some instances it was cut from 2 hours down to 10 minutes

Simplified, accelerated WAN and Storage »»infrastructure

Seeing virtually 155 Mbps throughput on »»a 3 Mbps link

“We did extensive testing — the Steelhead appliance proved itself

in our live environment.”

“Our replication times have been cut from hours to just

minutes or seconds.”

2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009







CASE STUDY: GeoEngineers

Bernier also discussed the actual deployment of the Steelhead appliances. “Similar to the use of our EqualLogic SAN, we found the Steelhead appliance really easy to deploy. Unlike other technologies that require significant changes to existing network infrastructures, the Steelhead appliance fits in transparently. We didn’t have to make any changes to our routers, switches, servers, or clients. The technology just works.”

Benefits: Better Collaboration, Simplified ReplicationBernier discussed the new solution GeoEngineers had put in place. “The combination of Riverbed and EqualLogic has provided the perfect solution for us. We get accelerated replication over the WAN — to the point where our employees can share files and collaborate in real time. That means employees can work across offices — across the globe — on projects together. They can leverage the right skills for the right job, no matter where someone is located. We reduced the need to send personnel to other offices to complete projects, which incurs significant travel costs and can be

disruptive to productivity. Now we can simply move the work instead of moving the people.”

“In addition to the collaboration aspect of using Steelhead appliances, we have seen incredible benefits for our replication processes of remote servers back to our EqualLogic SAN. Hours of

transfer times have been cut to just minutes or seconds. We eliminated the need to add additional servers as the company grows; our SAN grows with us and Riverbed continues to optimize and accelerate network traffic. The complete solution scales very well.”

Return on InvestmentBernier knew that, while the collaboration benefits of this WAN optimization solution were obvious, it would be easier to justify the purchase based on hard ROI. “We looked at the throughput that Steelhead appliance was giving us above the max bandwidth we were purchasing. We estimated to buy that much bandwidth; we would have to spend over $400,000 annually. Instead, we had a one-time spend of about 25% of that on Steelhead appliances plus ongoing maintenance. The ROI was obvious to executive management and payback was just a matter of months.”

Future PlansLooking into the future Courtenay knew that there would be changes to their application infrastructure. “For example, we know that we’re going to be transitioning to Microsoft SharePoint as a collaboration management tool.” Courtenay was excited to be able to utilize his Steelhead with these new projects. “Because Steelhead appliances accelerate a broad range of applications, we know that we will see dramatically accelerated SharePoint performance. With Steelhead appliances, we won’t have to have multiple SharePoint servers either.”

SummARy

GeoEngineers needed to enable their employees to collaborate in real-time across the WAN. At the same time, the company wanted to accelerate its file replication back to headquarters.

After reviewing competitive products and doing extensive testing, GeoEngineers developed a solution combining the Riverbed Steelhead appliance and the EqualLogic iSCSI SAN.

With Steelhead appliances, GeoEngineers can guarantee accelerated access to files at any office location. At the same time, replication is accelerated back to an easy to manage, scalable SAN.

“The ROI was obvious to executive management, and payback was

just a matter of months.”

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2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009






© 2009 Riverbed Technology. All rights reserved. Portions of Riverbed’s products are protected under Riverbed patents, as well as patents pending. Riverbed Technology, Riverbed, Steelhead, RiOS, Interceptor, Think Fast, the Riverbed logo, Mazu, Profiler, Atlas and Cascade are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riverbed Technology All other trademarks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

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