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Riverbed Technology (http://ctt.marketwire.com/?release719281&id89725&type1&urlhttp%3a%2f%2fwww.riverbed.com%2f) (NASDAQ: RVBD), the IT performance company, today announced that SRK Consulting, an international consulting practice for earth and water resource industries, has deployed Riverbed@ Steelhead@ appliances (http://ctt.marketwire.com/?release719281&id89728&type1&urlhttp%3a%2f%2fwww.riverbed.com%2fus%2fproducts%2fsteelhead_appliance%2findex.php) across its offices in South Africa to enable employees to collaborate across geographically distributed offices. By enabling large CAD files (http://ctt.marketwire.com/?release719281&id89731&type1&urlhttp%3a%2f%2fwww.riverbed.com%2fus%2fsolutions%2fapplication_performance%2fcad_application_acceleration.php) to be sent over the wide area network (WAN) in a matter of seconds, SRK has seen a dramatic increase in the number of projects managed and a reduction in the time taken to complete projects, resulting in increased productivity and profitability for SRK. The company has also experienced a 2.8x increase in bandwidth capacity.
"Simply put, Riverbed has revolutionized the way we work," explained Hamilton Macmillan, IT manager at SRK Consulting. "Before the Riverbed deployment, staff would re-invent work from one office to another, rely on couriers to deliver files, or a team based in one office would work in isolation. Riverbed has fundamentally changed the way we operate as a company, and made us more productive and efficient."
SRK Consulting is an independent mining, water and environmental consulting practice, providing advice and solutions to clients, mainly from earth and water resource industries. Formed in 1974, SRK now employs more than 900 staff internationally in 36 branch offices across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.
SRK relies upon technical CAD software, including ArcGIS, Minescape, Gemcom and AutoCAD. However, sending large files, such as map layouts, over the WAN was virtually impossible and any documents that needed to be shared amongst employees across offices had to be uploaded onto a CD and sent via courier, which could result in days of lost productivity. This also affected the number of projects that could be managed by the teams, hampering the company's ability to increase business activity.
To overcome these challenges, SRK Consulting looked at several WAN optimization vendors and, based on positive feedback from the marketplace, decided to test the Riverbed solution in conjunction with one of its IT partners, Datacentrix. "The test environment revolved specifically around the ArcGIS software, and testing involved sending files back and forth across the WAN between our Johannesburg and Cape Town offices," noted Macmillan. "With the Riverbed Steelhead appliances installed, our employees in Cape Town could access documents from the ArcGIS system in a matter of seconds, and this meant for the first time employees could collaborate together on documents. This was exciting for us as a company, as we could immediately see the opportunity to deliver more efficiency to the business with minimal investment."
Following the successful proof-of-concept, SRK has now installed eight Steelhead appliances across its offices in South Africa. "With Riverbed implemented, employees from all over South Africa can now access both the ArcGIS files and the main server, which hosts Microsoft Word and Excel, resulting in increased employee productivity. In addition, our bandwidth capacity has increased by almost three times."
SRK has also installed a Steelhead appliance at the offices of its IT partner, Internet Solutions. "Now that our employees can finally access documents over the WAN, we're installing Microsoft SharePoint (http://ctt.marketwire.com/?release719281&id89734&type1&urlhttp%3a%2f%2fwww.riverbed.com%2fus%2fsolutions%2fapplication_performance%2fmicrosoft_sharepoint.php) to take advantage of the benefits associated with a content management system," explained Macmillan. "Bandwidth is extremely expensive in South Africa, so to minimize costs we will install a SharePoint server at our Johannesburg offices for users based there and a second SharePoint server at Internet Solutions for our regional users. By installing the Steelhead appliance at Internet Solutions, we can rest assured that all of our users will be able to access SharePoint, regardless of which office they are working from."
"Riverbed has fundamentally changed the way we do business and made our organization efficient and productive," noted Macmillan. "Riverbed has also enabled us to take advantage of other IT systems that will deliver efficiencies back to the business. Without Riverbed we would still be working in the dark ages."
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements relating to the expected demand for Riverbed's products and services, statements regarding performance results of Riverbed solutions that may suggest likely or certain outcomes, and statements relating to Riverbed's ability to meet the needs of distributed organizations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they do not fully materialize or prove incorrect, could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include our ability to react to trends and challenges in our business and the markets in which we operate; our ability to anticipate market needs or develop new or enhanced products to meet those needs; the adoption rate of our products; our ability to establish and maintain successful relationships with our distribution partners; our ability to compete in our industry; fluctuations in demand, sales cycles and prices for our products and services; shortages or price fluctuations in our supply chain; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; general political, economic and market conditions and events; and other risks and uncertainties described more fully in our documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. More information about these and other risks that may impact Riverbed's business are set forth in our Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 8, 2011. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Any future product, feature or related specification that may be referenced in this release are for information purposes only and are not commitments to deliver any technology or enhancement. Riverbed reserves the right to modify future product plans at any time.
About Riverbed
Riverbed Technology is the IT 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 (http://ctt.marketwire.com/?release719281&id89737&type1&urlhttp%3a%2f%2fwww.riverbed.com) .
Riverbed and any Riverbed product or service name or logo used herein are trademarks of Riverbed Technology, Inc. All other trademarks used herein belong to their respective owners.
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