Polycom Deploys Riverbed Steelhead

Riverbed Technology (Nasdaq: RVBD), the IT infrastructure performance company for networks, applications and storage, today announced that Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions, has deployed award-winning Riverbed® WAN optimization solutions, including Steelhead® appliances, Steelhead Mobile and the Central Management Console (CMC), across its organization. As a result of the deployment, Polycom has dramatically increased data and application access for employees and cut IT costs by avoiding bandwidth upgrades.

Polycom has 48 offices and more than 2,600 employees around the world. In order to collaborate across multiple offices, Polycom employees constantly transfer files and access and share ERP data, and routinely run hundreds of hours of video conference calls each week. In fact, the company hosts more than 975,000 video calls per year over a single converged network. Its ERP server is centralized and the network must support a high volume of large file transfers, worldwide, including MAPI and SSL encryption traffic.

"Our video conferencing solutions allow teams around the world to work like they are in the same location. However, our systems and data were not keeping pace with our communications network requirements," said Glenn Noga, Polycom chief information officer. "Employees accessing systems in California from factories in Thailand and offices in Europe were experiencing delays. Our Thailand factory had delays of up to 22 minutes when transferring documents needed for shipping – clearly something had to be done."

To address productivity issues related to slow employee access to data and applications, Polycom knew that adding bandwidth wasn't the answer. Polycom already had a solid network in place to handle voice and video conferencing traffic. The challenge was to overcome the latency caused by the distance between employees and data. Polycom investigated WAN optimization offerings from several companies, ultimately choosing the Riverbed IT infrastructure performance solution because it was more powerful and easier to manage than the other products tested.

"After piloting the Riverbed solution with our factory in Thailand, the network team was convinced that the solution would solve our problem and that they could put it in place quickly around the world. We also proved that the Riverbed solution would work without impacting our IP voice and video conferencing traffic," said Noga.

Polycom employees are impressed by the increased application performance delivered by the Steelhead appliances. File transfers that previously took 22 minutes now take employees less than 60 seconds to download, which has dramatically improved both employee collaboration and productivity.

To manage the terabytes of data moving through its 16 Steelhead appliances, Polycom deployed the Riverbed CMC, which allows for the configuration, updating and monitoring of the appliances through one web interface. "With limited staff, having the ability to remotely manage our devices was important to us. This allows us to easily update all appliances at the same time," said Noga.

Deploying Riverbed Steelhead appliances has also had an impact on Polycom's bottom line. The company found a solution that didn't require increases in bandwidth. The benefit recognized by the business was the improved system performance in remote locations. This was especially welcomed when business volumes significantly increase at the end of quarter.