case study

CASE STUDY
In BRIEF
Industry
»» Technology (Software)
Challenges
»» Enable inter-office collaboration
across high latency low bandwidth
WAN links
»» Consolidate remote office file servers
and backup systems
Solution
»» Deployment of Riverbed
®
Steelhead®
appliances at the headquarters and each
branch office
Benefits
»»
Up to 99 percent reduction in data
transferred over the WAN
»» Large file transfer times reduced from
several hours to a few minutes
»» Local servers and backup systems
eliminated without affecting
onsite productivity
3SOFT
Riverbed Steelhead® Appliances Eliminate the Need for Local
Servers and Local Backup
Since its inception in 1988, Erlangen-based 3SOFT GmbH (www.3soft.de), a member of the Finnish
Elektrobit Group since March 2004, has made a name for itself as a leading provider of standard software
solutions for embedded systems (microprocessors that control the electronic devices in which they’re
embedded). 3SOFT provides products and services that operate and monitor such devices.
Over the years, the company has developed a strong focus on the automotive, medical systems, and
industrial automation sectors. 3SOFT’s customers include the market leaders in these industries: Alpine,
Audi, BMW, Bosch (Blaupunkt), ContiTemic, DaimlerChrysler, Fresenius Medical C are, Heidelberger
Druckmaschinen, Hella, Porsche, Siemens A&D, Siemens Med, Siemens VDO, Visteon, VW, ZF Lenksysteme
etc. The company currently has around 300 regular employees on its payroll.
Challenge: Enabling Collaboration for Inter-Office Client Teams
3SOFT’s IT infrastructure currently spans four sites: 3 in Germany — Erlangen (the company’s head office),
Braunschweig, and Stuttgart — and an office in Tokyo, Japan. An additional site, Munich, is in the
pipeline. The German sites communicate with
the head office in Erlangen over a 10 Mbps wide
“We were able to eliminate
area network (WAN). Stuttgart has a 6 Mbps
the local servers and backup
connection. The Tokyo site currently has a 512
kbps line that is soon to be upgraded to 2 Mbps.
system without affecting
on-site productivity.”
In the past, local file servers and backup systems
were deployed at each site. By way of central
corporate resources, Erlangen has two high-capacity file servers (complete with a backup solution), plus
the company’s entire Exchange infrastructure which is already centralized.
To date, however, data always had to be backed up locally at each branch office, as this could not be done
over the WAN, nor was it possible to use the local file servers. 3SOFT’s staff often works on source code
that runs into the hundreds of megabytes, so WAN-based access to the central server would have taken
too long and consumed too much bandwidth. A local infrastructure was especially vital for the Tokyo site,
where data transmission was subject to considerable latency due to the vast distance.
The option of a terminal server infrastructure was ruled out from the start, as many employees frequently
had to access and process data from notebooks during visits to customers. This requirement could not be
accommodated by a terminal server solution.
Solution: Steelhead Appliances Enable Remote Collaboration and Consolidation
MIT Technology GmbH, a service provider that
“The Steelhead appliances
specializes in storage solutions, recommended
Steelhead appliances from Riverbed to improve
slashed as much as 99% off the
application performance over the WAN, and enable
volume of data transferred.”
infrastructure consolidation. Robert Holzwarth,
IT Chief at 3SOFT, seized the opportunity and
requested a test installation. Stuttgart was chosen as the venue for the pilot project. Within just a few weeks,
convincing results quickly paved the way for a seamless transition from test installation to productive operation.
Deploying the Steelhead appliances could not have been easier. The basic configuration was ready in
about 15 minutes. The Steelhead appliance itself was then sent to Stuttgart, where a local member of
staff had no trouble hooking it up and going live.
CASE STUDY: 3SOFT
“Ultimately, you never know how useful an IT solution will be until you see it working under real-world
conditions. On that score, the Steelhead appliances convinced us 100 percent. We were able to deactivate
the local servers and the backup system without affecting on-site productivity,” said Holzwarth. “The
Steelhead appliances slashed as much as 99 percent off the original volume of data transferred when we
accessed the CVS repositories, which is where source codes are kept for the software developers to work
on. With other protocols, volumes were reduced by an average of 75 percent.”
3SOFT subsequently deployed Steelhead appliances in their Braunschweig and Tokyo sites. Before the
deployment, the Tokyo staff could not even browse through the file system on the server in Erlangen.
Latency of as much as 300 to 400 ms between Erlangen and Tokyo was constantly provoking timeouts.
As soon as the Steelhead appliance was deployed, the people in Tokyo had no trouble working on the
server in Erlangen — despite substantial latency,
and even though they were still using a 512
“Configuration took 15 minutes.
kbps connection.
And only one local member
of staff was needed to take the
appliance live.”
Here again, data volumes were reduced by
around 75 percent on average. “A significant
improvement was visible as soon as the Steelhead
appliance went into service,” Holzwarth attests.
“The people in Tokyo were elated. It used to take several hours to transfer 100 MB of source code from
the CVS repository. Now, it only takes a matter of minutes.”
About Riverbed
Riverbed 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
Steelhead Appliances: The New Standard
One challenge to the use of a Steelhead appliance was the Samba server, which Steelhead does not
normally support. “But Riverbed’s support team was very fast and efficient,” says Holzwarth, looking
back. “When we explained the problem, they
“It used to take several hours
immediately performed an analysis. Three days
later, they supplied us with a patch that worked
to transfer 100 MB of source
perfectly first time.”
2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
code. Now, it only takes
3SOFT attaches great importance to the low risk
a matter of minutes.”
in deploying Steelhead appliances. Although the
Steelhead appliances are fitted “in-path”, i.e.
on the critical link between the LAN switch and the WAN router, there is no danger that the connection
might be lost should an appliance fail. If this happens, the appliance merely operates as a piece of
network wiring, so data traffic continues to flow through it unimpeded. Moreover, each appliance
naturally also has an alert function that warns the administrator if problems arise.
3SOFT is a successful, growing company that is currently preparing to open a new office in Munich. While
planning has not yet been finalized, one thing is for sure: In Munich too, a Steelhead appliance will keep
WAN performance up to speed — and eliminate the need to deploy local file servers and backup systems.
Summary
3SOFT had been relying on local file servers and backup systems in its
remote offices, because high latency, low bandwidth WAN links had made
remote data access all but impossible.
By deploying Steelhead appliances, 3SOFT was able to eliminate the remote
file servers and backup systems, without affecting remote productivity.
Employees in all locations can now collaborate over the WAN, sharing files in
a matter of minutes instead of hours.
Steelhead appliances will become standard equipment for each new
office rollout.
Riverbed Technology
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Fax: +1 415 247 8801
www.riverbed.com
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Tel: +81 3 5419 1990
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CS-3SOFT031006