Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD), the IT performance company, today announced that SRK Consulting, an international consulting practice for earth and water resource industries, has deployed Steelhead appliances across its offices in South Africa to enable employees to collaborate across geographically distributed offices.
By enabling large CAD files to be sent over the wide area network (WAN) in a matter of seconds, SRK has seen a dramatic increase in the number of projects managed and a reduction in the time taken to complete projects, resulting in increased productivity and profitability for SRK. The company has also experienced a 2.8x increase in bandwidth capacity.
“Simply put, Riverbed has revolutionised the way we work,” explained Hamilton Macmillan, IT manager at SRK Consulting. “Before the Riverbed deployment, staff would re-invent work from one office to another, rely on couriers to deliver files, or a team based in one office would work in isolation. Riverbed has fundamentally changed the way we operate as a company, and made us more productive and efficient.”
SRK Consulting is an independent mining, water and environmental consulting practice, providing advice and solutions to clients, mainly from earth and water resource industries. Formed in 1974, SRK now employs more than 900 staff internationally in 36 branch offices across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.
SRK relies upon technical CAD software, including ArcGIS, Minescape, Gemcom and AutoCAD. However, sending large files, such as map layouts, over the WAN was virtually impossible and any documents that needed to be shared among employees across offices had to be uploaded onto a CD and sent via courier, which could result in days of lost productivity. This also affected the number of projects that could be managed by the teams, hampering the company's ability to increase business activity.
To overcome these challenges, SRK Consulting looked at several WAN optimisation vendors and, based on positive feedback from the marketplace, decided to test the Riverbed solution in conjunction with one of its IT partners, Datacentrix.
“The test environment revolved specifically around the ArcGIS software, and testing involved sending files back and forth across the WAN between our Johannesburg and Cape Town offices,” noted Macmillan. “With the Riverbed Steelhead appliances installed, our employees in Cape Town could access documents from the ArcGIS system in a matter of seconds, and this meant for the first time employees could collaborate together on documents. This was exciting for us as a company, as we could immediately see the opportunity to deliver more efficiency to the business with minimal investment.”
Following the successful proof-of-concept, SRK has now installed eight Steelhead appliances across its offices in South Africa. “With Riverbed implemented, employees from all over South Africa can now access both the ArcGIS files and the main server, which hosts Microsoft Word and Excel, resulting in increased employee productivity. In addition, our bandwidth capacity has increased by almost three times.”
SRK has also installed a Steelhead appliance at the offices of its IT partner, Internet Solutions. “Now that our employees can finally access documents over the WAN, we're installing Microsoft SharePoint to take advantage of the benefits associated with a content management system,” explained Macmillan. “Bandwidth is extremely expensive in South Africa, so to minimise costs we will install a SharePoint server at our Johannesburg offices for users based there and a second SharePoint server at Internet Solutions for our regional users. By installing the Steelhead appliance at Internet Solutions, we can rest assured that all of our users will be able to access SharePoint, regardless of which office they are working from.
“Riverbed has fundamentally changed the way we do business and made our organisation efficient and productive,” noted Macmillan. “Riverbed has also enabled us to take advantage of other IT systems that will deliver efficiencies back to the business. Without Riverbed we would still be working in the dark ages.”
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