What are you looking for ?
Infinidat
Articles_top

Baker Engineering and Risk Consultants Chooses Riverbed SteelFusion

For delivering application performance at six edge locationss

Riverbed Technology, Inc. announced that Baker Engineering and Risk Consultants, Inc. (BakerRisk), an international risk management company, is using Riverbed SteelFusion to ensure that 100% of their clients’ data stays safely in the data center while delivering superior application performance at each of their six edge locations.

According to the company, after adopting Riverbed solutions, file transfer times were reduced by nearly 90%, DR replication traffic was reduced by 65%, and all data was safeguarded at one secure location, increasing operational efficiency by centralizing a lean IT team. Between the six edge locations, BakerRisk saved between $140,000 and $240,000 in infrastructure cost and has eliminated the need to have skilled technical staff permanently stationed at each of their sites, eliminating an ongoing operational expense.

BakerRisk provides solutions to companies and government agencies involved with hazardous materials to prevent or mitigate accidents, and protect personnel and other assets. With six offices, its engineers help companies in more than 50 countries prepare against everything from the mundane (component failure) to the extreme (vapor cloud explosions).

Engineers generate large data sets. Individual files can be as large as 100GB due to detailed facility information and large volumes of simulation data.

The company’s initial attempt to centralize its engineering applications and data failed.

People sat at their desks, unable to work, watching files download,” explained Robert Mumphrey, manager of IT, BakerRisk. “That centralization effort left a bad taste.”  

To give the engineers the application performance they needed, BakerRisk maintained separate IT infrastructure (applications, servers, SAN, etc.) at each remote location, which proved to be costly and difficult to maintain. The first step toward addressing these issues was implementing WAN optimization using Riverbed SteelHead and SteelHead Mobile software.

“SteelHead WAN optimization transformed the way people worked overnight. A file that took eight to 10 hours to transfer now took about an hour,” said Mumphrey.

In addition, the company saw a 65% reduction in storage replication traffic to its DR site. Next, Mumphrey learned about SteelFusion, which would allow BakerRisk to converge remote storage, server, backup and networking infrastructure into one appliance while securing 100% of its data in its data center and delivering application performance as if the data resided locally.

Without announcing it, Mumphrey set up a test of SteelFusion in the company’s largest office. “We didn’t announce what we were doing,” Mumphrey noted. “After three weeks, we told them the data was in the data center. They couldn’t believe it.

The company saved $20,000 to $40,000 per office by replacing remote servers, storage and backup with SteelFusion Edge devices. Importantly, employees got the level of application performance they needed.

Listening to people talk, I hear how they’re able to get things done more efficiently,” Mumphrey said. “If I tried to take the Riverbed appliances out of our infrastructure, I’d probably be walked out of the building. Without Riverbed, they wouldn’t be able to do their business the way they do it today.

With the 200TB of data safely housed in the data center, Mumphrey rests easier: “Our remote sites are lean – a router, a couple switches and the SteelFusion appliance.

Both management and security are improved in the lean environment.

Riverbed Delivers Solutions for Cloud and Digital World
Riverbed is delivering solutions to help companies transition from legacy hardware to a new software-defined and cloud-centric approach to networking, and improve end user experience, allowing enterprises’ digital transformation initiatives to reach their potential. Its integrated platform delivers the agility, visibility, and performance businesses need to be successful in a cloud and digital world. By leveraging Riverbed’s platform, organizations can deliver apps, data, and services from any public, private, or hybrid cloud across any network to any end-point.

Riverbed SteelHead is an optimization solution for accelerated delivery and performance of applications across the software-defined WAN. SteelFusion enables a software-defined edge by bringing together virtualization, storage caching, and WAN optimization into a single hyperconverged infrastructure solution that meets both the needs of the enterprise as well as the needs of branch employees for performing applications that simply work so they can do their jobs.

Articles_bottom
AIC
ATTO
OPEN-E