Published:
Raiffeisen Banks Installs 150 Steelhead Appliances
Riverbed Ensures Data Integrity for Banking System

Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD), the
technology and market leader in wide-area data services (WDS), today
announced that Raiffeisen Banks, part of the Raiffeisen Organization, has
installed 150 Riverbed® Steelhead® appliances and the Riverbed Central
Management Console (CMC) as part of its ongoing strategy to improve access
to real-time data and increase worker productivity, while controlling IT
costs. The speed provided by Riverbed has allowed Raiffeisen Banks to
centralize its IT infrastructure and remove 150 servers from its local
branches. In addition, Raiffeisen Banks' bandwidth utilization has dropped
by over 87 percent.
The Federation of Raiffeisen Cooperatives (www.raiffeisen.it) is a group of
cooperative entities based in Italy, incorporating banking, agriculture,
energy and social services. The banking and insurance services are managed
by Raiffeisen Banks with a total of 190 offices throughout the Alto Adige
province in Northern Italy, employing 1,750 people and with a turnover of
EUR 9.15bn. Raiffeisen Banks outsources its IT services to Raising Unified
Network S.p.A (RUN).
Raiffeisen Banks had previously pursued a strategy to install servers in
each branch location. However, for 190 offices throughout the Northern
Italian region, this strategy had become unmanageable. Data between sites
was not always consistent and on occasion was not updated. Backups were
performed locally, resulting in high costs; maintaining the servers was
also time-consuming and costly. For mobile employees the problem was even
more widespread, with users losing valuable time trying to download emails
and files.
To manage this dispersed architecture, Raiffeisen has outsourced its IT
services to RUN. "The main challenge was to consolidate data from 190 local
offices to just 40 head offices and a centralized data center. This would
provide a more robust architecture, and would allow users to have constant
and up-to-date access to files," explained Dr. Peter Werth, director of
RUN. "However, we wanted to find a solution that would not involve an
increase in bandwidth costs."
Working with Zycko UK, Werth investigated the WAN optimization solutions
available from Riverbed and Cisco. "Riverbed was way ahead of the
competition and the clear leader," said Werth. "The Riverbed Steelhead
appliances were just easier to implement and deploy. They're more
transparent and technologically advanced."
Following the installation of the 150 Steelhead appliances, Raiffeisen has
successfully removed 150 servers from local branches and centralized the IT
infrastructure to its data center. The bank has experienced other benefits,
including simpler software upgrades and reallocating IT staff from backing
up data to other IT projects.
"The results have been great. Bandwidth utilization has been reduced by
over 87 percent, CIFS traffic has been reduced by 90 percent and HTTP
traffic reduced by over 75 percent," said Werth. "With the Riverbed CMC we
also have a real-time view of our data and global visibility of Raiffeisen
operations."
The bank intends to remove servers from all 190 locations and plans to
install the remaining 40 Steelhead appliances in the following months. It
is also testing Steelhead Mobile for its consultants and mobile employees.
Steelhead Products
Riverbed WDS solutions enable organizations 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 centers, remote offices and mobile workers by five to 50 times
and in some cases up to 100 times, the Riverbed 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 organizations
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.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including
statements relating to the expected demand for Riverbed's products and
services, and statements relating to Riverbed's ability to meet the needs
of distributed organizations. These forward-looking statements involve
risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they do not fully
materialize or prove incorrect, could cause our results to differ
materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking
statements. The risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to
differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking
statements include our ability to react to trends and challenges in our
business and the markets in which we operate; our ability to anticipate
market needs or develop new or enhanced products to meet those needs; the
adoption rate of our products; our ability to establish and maintain
successful relationships with our distribution partners; our ability to
compete in our industry; fluctuations in demand, sales cycles and prices
for our products and services; shortages or price fluctuations in our
supply chain; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights;
general political, economic and market conditions and events; and other
risks and uncertainties described more fully in our documents filed with or
furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. More information
about these and other risks that may impact Riverbed's business are set
forth in our Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on October 30, 2008. All
forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information
available to us as of the date hereof, and we assume no obligation to
update these forward-looking statements. Any future product, feature or
related specification that may be referenced in this release are for
information purposes only and are not commitments to deliver any technology
or enhancement. Riverbed reserves the right to modify future product plans
at any time.
About 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.
Copyright © 2009, MarketWire
Copyright © 2009, NewsBlaze,
Daily News
Tags: ,Computers and Software:Hardware, ComputersandSoftware:Internet, ComputersandSoftware:Networking, ComputersandSoftware:Peripherals, ComputersandSoftware:Software, FinancialServices:CommercialandInvestmentBanking, FinancialServices:RetailBanking, ,NASDAQ01,NASDAQ01,NASDAQ01,CA,SAN FRANCISCO, CA
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