Generali Group in Poland Deployed 20 Riverbed Steelhead Appliances

Riverbed Technology, Inc. announced that the Generali Group in Poland has deployed 20 Riverbed Steelhead appliances and Steelhead Mobile across its operations to improve employee collaboration and productivity.

With the Riverbed solution installed, Generali has experienced up to an 80 percent reduction in the time taken to access applications over the wide area network (WAN). Prior to the Riverbed deployment, users could sometimes wait for an hour to access documents; with Riverbed deployed, they can now collaborate on files in as little as seconds, which has resulted in increased employee productivity.

Generali Group is a financial and insurance group and for almost 180 years has been synonymous with safety and reliability for millions of people looking to secure their future. In Europe, Generali occupies the third position in terms of gross premiums written. Present in Poland since 1999, Generali offers a range of insurance products for individual customers and businesses, including life insurance, motor insurance, participation in the Open Pension Fund and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA).

Generali employees transmit large amounts of data across the WAN daily and use a range of CIFS and HTTP applications designed specifically for insurance companies, as well as Lotus Notes. Throughout the 80 Generali offices located in Poland, employees were struggling to access documents and files over the WAN.

Marcin Piwko, the deputy IT director responsible for IT infrastructure at Generali Group, explains: "The IT support team were receiving a number of calls daily from our employees complaining about the time taken to download documents. In some cases users were waiting more than an hour to access files. As an insurance company dealing with a large number of claims each day, this was an unacceptable situation that was adversely affecting employee productivity."

Generali’s technology partner, Trecom, suggested the WAN optimization solution from Riverbed to address the application performance issues. Generali deployed Steelhead appliances in 20 branch offices and deployed Steelhead Mobile in offices with less than five employees and for a number of remote laptop workers.

"With the Riverbed solutions installed we saw an immediate improvement in file download speeds," says Piwko. "Now, employees based in different offices can work on the same document as if they were in the same room. The difference this has made to our company’s productivity and efficiency levels is unprecedented. In addition, the calls to the IT support desk have reduced considerably, so now the IT team can work on other projects that deliver value back to the business."

"Riverbed has enabled our employees to be highly productive and efficient, which is a huge benefit to any organization," continues Piwko. "Based on the efficiency gains we’re experiencing, the Riverbed solution is now a critical part of our IT infrastructure."