the pdf

CASE STUDY
IN BRIEF
Industry
»» Manufacturing
Challenges
»» Accelerate application performance
»» Reduce file transfer time
»» Centralize IT infrastructure
Solution
»» Six Riverbed Steelhead appliances
Benefits
»» File transfers cut from hours to minutes
»» Successfully avoided a bandwidth
upgrade
»» Enabled data center consolidation
»» Reduced cost and complexity of future
remote IT deployments
Le Coq Sportif
Riverbed® Steelhead® Products Solve Bandwidth And Application
Performance Problems For Leading Textile Manufacturing Company
Challenge: Consolidating Applications for a Distributed Workforce without
Performance Compromise
With eight offices and a growing number of remote employees, Le Coq Sportif faced
many IT challenges. Mr. Schmitt, IT manager at Le Coq Sportif, explained the situation
in detail. “With an increasingly distributed workforce, collaboration is consistently
becoming a bigger challenge. We use Microsoft Dynamics as our ERP solution, and given
the nature of our business – quick turnaround times, varying product lifetimes with
intense design elements – we are heavy users of PLM tools like Centric and other graphic
tools. Most importantly, employees everywhere regularly share files, especially large
graphic and design files.”
Schmitt recalled the time when the users started to call daily, complaining about poor
application performance and long download times. He said, “It started when the
remote office in Paris grew from six to 28 users. We didn’t want to create additional
IT infrastructure at the office, but with the increased number of users accessing
applications over the wide area network (WAN) performance began to suffer. It was
taking over an hour to download critical information and that affected employee
morale. Business productivity was reduced and users became impatient and frustrated.”
He continued, “We wanted to leverage existing resources more efficiently and guessed
that bandwidth upgrades would do nothing to guarantee reliable performance of
business applications.”
Schmitt also discussed Le Coq Sportif’s consolidation project. “We wanted to simplify
our current IT infrastructure from remote offices to a centralized site. But we knew
that this could lead to performance issues. After all, when you move data further away
from the end user, applications typically take longer to deliver.”
Solution: Riverbed’s WAN Optimization Solutions
Le Coq Sportif first considered upgrading its bandwidth and spoke to France Telecom.
Bandwidth upgrades, however, were infeasible both from an availability and cost
standpoint. And it was also clear that just adding bandwidth wouldn’t necessarily solve
the performance problem. They considered WANScaler from Citrix, but the IT department
quickly discounted the product for two reasons: it lacked the maturity to tackle complex
WAN issues and still required a costly 2-3X bandwidth upgrade. Schmitt said, “We came
across Riverbed through a reference from one of our partners. We tested Riverbed, and
found that it addressed all our issues, in terms of application acceleration, bandwidth and
cost savings, and usability.”
Le Coq Sportif deployed six Steelhead appliances across multiple locations in France, Spain,
Italy and Taiwan. Schmitt noted, “The results were impressive. The file transfer time was
cut from hours to minutes. Subsequent file edits and retransfers were reduced to just a few
seconds - a performance that was practically LAN-like.”
CASE STUDY: Le Coq Sportif
He continued, “At the same time, the Steelhead appliance was optimizing our bandwidth.
On average the Steelhead appliance was eliminating 65% to 75% of our high-volume
application traffic, substantially increasing our WAN capacity, with no additional investment
in actual physical capacity.” Schmitt also talked about the success of the consolidation
project, “We were able to centralize
and boost the performance of our IT
Riverbed has no equal in
infrastructure successfully, without
terms of improved application
compromising employee productivity.”
performance, simplicity and
ease of use. The product was
incredibly simple to install, and
has exceeded our expectations
in terms of performance
improvement and usability.
Impressed with Riverbed’s solution Schmitt
concluded, “Riverbed Steelhead appliances
have no equal in terms of improved
application performance, simplicity and
ease-of-use. Our overall IT costs have been
cut and the product has exceeded our
expectations in every way.”
Benefits: A More Productive Workforce and Centralized Data
Riverbed Steelhead appliances enabled Le Coq Sportif to accelerate application performance
for a globally distributed workforce. In addition, they accrued significant bandwidth savings.
Schmitt noted, “The performance of critical applications improved significantly. Within two
weeks of deployment, we were able to speed up data transfers by 30x.“
Talking about bandwidth optimization Schmitt noted, “We found Riverbed to be much more
effective at optimizing bandwidth than any of the alternatives. The combination of bandwidth
optimization coupled with protocol acceleration resulted in a significant increase in throughput
across the company’s global WAN.” He continued, “Steelhead appliances have also enabled us
to centralize our IT infrastructure at our corporate data center, from where all the remote sites
can access critical data and documentation. We no longer need to maintain IT infrastructure at
all our branch offices worldwide.”
Schmitt concluded, “The project proved
to be a huge success for our organization.
We achieved significant results quickly with
minimum effort from our side. Above all,
our employees are very satisfied with file
download speeds.”
The project proved to be a huge
success for our organization. We
achieved significant results quickly
with minimum effort from our side.
Return on Investment: Savings now and in the future
“Many organizations assess ROI by using financial costs, and for us these hard savings are
large enough to pay for the investment.” Schmitt noted, “Financial savings came both
from the avoidance of bandwidth upgrades and the reduction in IT management costs. By
reducing the amount of data traversing the WAN link, the savings in bandwidth costs alone
paid for our investment in Riverbed.”
By reducing the amount of data
He continued, “Due to the consolidation
of the IT infrastructure at our corporate
traversing the WAN link, the
data center, we experienced a quantum
savings in bandwidth costs
reduction in manpower costs as well. The
alone paid for our investment in
more interesting savings come from our
future growth - we are expanding rapidly,
Riverbed.
opening offices in Taiwan and two other
countries. My cost and time to set up IT in each of these new locations is a fraction of what
it was previously. And our current bandwidth is enough to handle this expansion.”
“But the qualitative and productivity benefits are much more strategic than the quantifiable
direct benefits,” continued Schmitt,
“Riverbed has substantially improved
Thanks to Riverbed my cost
the end-user experience for employees.
and time to set up IT in new
Productivity numbers would be hard to
locations is a fraction of what it
collect, but even if we save our employees
was previously. And our current
just 15 minutes per day because of the
faster application performance, that
bandwidth is enough to handle
can translate into more meaningful
this expansion.
collaboration across offices.”
SUMMARY
Le Coq Sportif is a leading lifetsyle manufacturer with a workforce spread
across multiple locations. Their most critical requirement was to enable
effective real-time collaboration across offices to improve productivity
and business agility. In addition, the company wanted to centralize IT
infrastructure while expanding the staff in remote offices. Looking for a
comprehensive wide area network (WAN) optimization solution, Le Coq
Sportif deployed Riverbed Steelhead appliances. Using Riverbed, Le Coq
Sportif achieved faster data sharing, accelerated application performance,
optimized bandwidth utilization, and radically improved throughput across
the WAN. Le Coq Sportif was also able to centralize IT infrastructure
at their corporate data center in Strasbourg while avoiding additional
bandwidth upgrades and without compromising application performance
to remote workers.
Le Coq Sportif enjoys strong brand recognition and a solid global
reputation. Based on its historical presence and the high value component
of its name, Le Coq Sportif seeks to regain its market position by focusing
on product and technology development and creating new designs which
impart to the consumer the emotions and excitement of sport.
About Riverbed
Riverbed delivers performance for the
globally connected enterprise. With
Riverbed, enterprises can successfully and
intelligently implement strategic initiatives
such as virtualization, consolidation, cloud
computing, and disaster recovery without
fear of compromising performance. By giving
enterprises the platform they need to
understand, optimize and consolidate their
IT, Riverbed helps enterprises to build a fast,
fluid and dynamic IT architecture that aligns
with the business needs of the organization.
Additional information about Riverbed
(NASDAQ: RVBD) is available at
www.riverbed.com.
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