Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD), the IT performance company, has announced that Medi-Clinic, one of the largest private hospital groups in the world, has deployed 58 Riverbed Steelhead appliances and the Central Management Console (CMC) at its southern African operations.
The wide area network (WAN) optimisation deployment will support Medi-Clinic's existing private cloud computing strategy and allow Medi-Clinic to avoid a bandwidth upgrade, which would have cost an additional R5 million ($653 000) per year. The company recovered the initial capital investment within 11 months and has seen an 80% improvement in file download speeds, which has resulted in a dramatic improvement in employee productivity.
Medi-Clinic Southern Africa is an established leader in the private hospital industry, with 93 sites across South Africa and Namibia. These sites consist of hospitals, practice management units, nursing recruitment agencies, a hospital equipment manufacturing site and regional offices.
Medi-Clinic Southern Africa employees rely heavily on SQL applications, including systems such as patient and pharmaceutical administration, hospital events management, infection control and emergency centre administration. Other systems include practice management, human resources management and financial systems.
Medi-Clinic implemented a private cloud computing initiative and centralised certain critical IT systems to its central data centre. While this strategy reduced management overhead costs, it also led to user complaints about the length of time it was taking to access critical applications and the intranet.
Deon Myburgh, group information communications technology (ICT) operations manager for Medi-Clinic Southern Africa, calculated that the company would need to double its current bandwidth to improve application performance, which would cost an additional R5 million ($653 000) per year, and still this option would not completely address performance issues. “We needed to find a solution that was cost-effective, would support our private cloud environment, and would improve employee productivity,” said Myburgh.
Having ruled out a bandwidth upgrade, Medi-Clinic Southern Africa tested WAN optimisation products from a number of vendors. “While some other alternatives looked fantastic in terms of statistics provided to the IT department, our users saw no improvement in file access times,” noted Myburgh. “In contrast, users saw a real difference when we tested the Riverbed Steelhead appliances. In one test, accessing the intranet was reduced from 80 seconds to nine seconds. Our users were extremely impressed.”
With Steelhead appliances installed in 58 locations, Medi-Clinic Southern Africa has experienced a 3x reduction in bandwidth utilisation and an average 80% improvement in file download speeds. The reduction in the time taken to access files and applications has resulted in a dramatic increase in employee productivity. Selecting a Riverbed WAN optimisation solution has enabled Medi-Clinic Southern Africa to reap the efficiency gains from its cloud computing initiative without sacrificing user productivity. “Taking into account hardware costs, improved user productivity, and better management of our network, we are extremely satisfied with the Riverbed implementation,” explained Myburgh. “Riverbed is now a critical component of our organisation. Our decision to use Riverbed has delivered significant returns.”
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