Riverbed Steelhead Deployment Reduces Bandwidth and Staffing Costs for National Architecture Services Firm
Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD) today announced that Ware Malcomb has selected and deployed Riverbed(R) Steelhead(R) appliances and Steelhead Mobile to overcome bandwidth and latency problems causing collaboration challenges for employees in branch offices and mobile workers.
Its Riverbed deployment has allowed the firm to easily share workloads across offices, enabling Ware Malcomb to maximize the productivity of its existing staff and eliminate the need for additional financial investments in bandwidth.
Ware Malcomb is a national design firm offering planning, architecture, interior design, graphic design and site development services to commercial development and corporate clients throughout North America. The firm's corporate office is located in Irvine, California, with additional locations in San Diego, Los Angeles, Inland Empire, Northern California, Sacramento, Phoenix, Denver, Chicago, New Jersey and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Over the last 10 years Ware Malcomb has grown from three local offices to 11 sites across the US. As the firm grew, collaboration between offices became increasingly strained. Accessing data on CAD platforms, including AutoCAD, ADT, Revit, MicroStation and ADD, became increasingly difficult for branch offices and mobile workers.
For example, one Photoshop file could take about five minutes to copy over the network, causing end-users to complain to the IT staff. These challenges forced Ware Malcomb to look for a solution that would allow more efficient collaboration between dispersed offices and remote workers.
Ware Malcomb's Director of IT, Moses Gonzales, led the mission to secure a WAN optimization solution by evaluating several competitors and ultimately selecting Riverbed Steelhead appliances and Steelhead Mobile.
"Deploying the Steelhead appliances and Steelhead Mobile has significantly improved productivity at our firm. Files are much easier to access. The Photoshop file that once took five minutes to copy was reduced to about 20 seconds," said Gonzales. "Increased collaboration is only one of the benefits we've experienced from our Riverbed deployment.
We're experiencing cost savings by eliminating the need to hire employees in a specific geographical area or adding expensive bandwidth." Ware Malcomb estimates that to obtain the same type of flexibility as its Riverbed deployment, it would need to at least triple its current bandwidth, adding approximately $12,000 a month in costs.
The firm relies on sharing resources and employees between offices to complete its projects efficiently and within budget. According to Gonzales, Riverbed has become an important part of the company's growth strategy. "Steelhead products are standard equipment as the firm opens new offices. When the firm launches services in new markets, we keep staff at new locations to a minimum until we build a client base to support local employees.
During this transition time, the firm has teams of experts from other locations work with local clients to meet their needs. Without Riverbed, this shifting of work between offices would not be as seamless or cost efficient."
Ware Malcomb also installed Riverbed Steelhead Mobile client software on the laptops of 30 of its most senior employees and at one remote location. According to Gonzales, "Many of our employees routinely work from home and at job sites. One of the biggest complaints we get in IT is poor mobile application performance. Today, employees with Steelhead Mobile on their laptops get office-like performance regardless of their location.
And, for our smallest offices where deployment of a Steelhead appliance was just not feasible, we are now able to deliver LAN-like performance. The combination of the Steelhead appliances and Steelhead Mobile is unbeatable."
