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Study shows WAN optimisation as strategic component for today's distributed and mobile workers


Johannesburg, 10 Dec 2007

As enterprises continue their march toward mobility and an increasingly distributed workforce, the importance of accelerating access to network assets and applications proves critical. A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting, on behalf of Riverbed Technology, found that the proliferation of decentralised organisations is driving enterprises to view Wide-area Data Services (WDS) as a strategic component for today's distributed and mobile environments.

To view the complete study, "Optimising Users and Applications in a Mobile World," please visit: http://www.riverbed.com/lg/index.php?c=70170000000HOvK.

The study surveyed more than 300 IT decision-makers and influencers from around the world in a broad range of industries. The findings of the study show a progressive fragmentation of organisations. 40% of respondents noted that their organisation would likely be more decentralised three years from now. As branch offices and mobile workers play an increasingly critical role in business growth, IT struggles to keep up as users demand applications that are always available. In fact, 86% of organisations indicated they receive end-user complaints with the most common complaint being application performance.

According to the study, "Companies are successfully overcoming this hurdle by deploying WAN optimisation solutions that are specifically tuned for a mobile environment. Mobile WAN optimisation provides the acceleration needed to ensure consistent performance, room for new applications, and the ability to ensure end-user productivity at all times. As companies become increasingly distributed, they'll look to use techniques that improve WAN throughput and accelerate applications for branch and remote employees."

The ability to quickly connect an organisation's data centre, branch offices and mobile workers is a capability that not all vendors are prepared to support even though the customer demand is growing. Riverbed's Steelhead Mobile, based on its WDS technology, delivers LAN-like application performance to all employees, regardless of location. Employees on the road, working from home or connected wirelessly in the office experience performance improvements up to 100 times. According to customer testimonials, file transfers that once took up to an hour can often now be accomplished in a couple of minutes or seconds.

"The mobile workforce has continued to grow. Because of this, it is obvious from not only our customers, but the industry as a whole, that WDS is a strategic component for the data centre, branch and mobile worker," says Christo Briedenhann, local country manager at Riverbed. "In addition, as enterprises increase the number and complexity of applications that are deployed to mobile users, the potential for application performance issues grows. IT departments will only be able to address these concerns if they have a long-term strategy in place."

Additional findings from the study outline the need for a long-term strategy for distributed work environments - including the data centre, branch office and mobile worker:

* 81% of organisations have branch offices, with more than 30% of companies indicating they support over 100 branch offices.
* Less than 30% of employees reside at headquarters. These employees require access to the network from branch offices, home offices and external worksites.
* Mobile users are not the standard road warriors of the past, but a diverse group:
* 63% occasionally work from home;
* 45% are full-time work from home; and,
* 28% are contractors or other non-corporate employees.
* WAN optimisation is the second most common technology to overcome woes - not only to ensure secure access to network resources, but to improve the performance and end-user experience.
* 48% noted a current implementation of the technology, with 26% considering the existing implementation as already large-scale and strategic.

Steelhead Products

Riverbed's WDS solutions enable organisations of all sizes to overcome a host of severe problems, including poor application performance and insufficient bandwidth at remote sites. By speeding the performance of applications between data centres, remote offices and mobile workers by five to 50 times and in some cases up to 100 times, Riverbed's award-winning Steelhead WDS products enable companies to consolidate IT, improve backup and replication processes to ensure data integrity, and improve staff productivity and collaboration. Steelhead products have been deployed in organisations ranging from the world's largest corporations with offices around the globe to small companies with a couple of sites that are just miles apart. To learn more, view Riverbed's demo: www.riverbed.com/pr/jack.

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Riverbed

Riverbed Technology is the technology and market leader in wide-area data services (WDS) solutions for companies worldwide. By enabling application performance over the wide area network (WAN) that is orders of magnitude faster than what users experience today, Riverbed is changing the way people work, and enabling a distributed workforce that can collaborate as if they were local. Additional information about Riverbed (Nasdaq: RVBD) is available at www.riverbed.com.

Riverbed Technology, Riverbed, Steelhead, RiOS, Interceptor, and the Riverbed logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riverbed Technology, Inc. All other trademarks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

Editorial contacts

Nicola Knight
PR Connections
(+270) 83 269 2227
riverbed@pr.co.za