Are you looking for a comprehensive solution that addresses insufficient or congested bandwidth, impaired application performance, slow remote backup and replication or obstacles to IT consolidation? This paper will explain how Riverbed, whose product line, the Steelhead family of appliances, enables users to enjoy LAN-like access to important data and applications regardless of their location.
W H I T E P AP E R A d d i n g B u s i n e s s V a l u e w i t h W i d e - Ar e a D a t a S e r v i c e s Sponsored by: Riverbed Technology Lucinda Borovick Richard L. Villars Randy Perry Eric Hatcher August 2007
E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y moc. With the growing importance of anywhere, anytime access for an increasingly cdi. dispersed workforce, IT managers are continually looking for ways to accelerate ww application performance across the wide area network (WAN). w 510 Point products are available to improve one or another aspect of WAN performance, 4.5 such as insufficient or congested bandwidth, impaired application performance, slow 39.8 remote backup and replication, or obstacles to IT consolidation. However, IT 05. managers would like a comprehensive wide-area solution that addresses all of these F problems, so that users can enjoy LAN-like access to important data and applications 002 regardless of their location. 8.278. One company that is offering the benefits of wide-area data services (WDS) is 805. Riverbed, whose product line, the Steelhead family of appliances, optimizes TCP/IP P traffic and provides further application optimization to make it easier for organizations AS to accelerate the most important applications for users anywhere in the world. By U 1 accelerating application performance and reducing bandwidth utilization, the Riverbed 071 WDS solution is designed not only to improve application performance, but also to 0 A expedite the consolidation of IT infrastructure and enable faster network-based M ,m backup. ahgni The Riverbed Steelhead appliances increase user productivity by speeding the mar performance of applications between distributed sites and between remote offices F te and enterprise datacenters, allowing faster access to centrally located applications ert and facilitating collaboration within a distributed workforce. The appliances also have S ne a number of features designed to optimize the work of IT. epS 5 : To validate and determine the business benefits of WDS, IDC interviewed IT sret managers at 12 companies of different sizes in a variety of industries that had rau deployed Riverbed's WDS solution. IDC asked detailed questions about the qda deployment and support costs and the savings achieved and then applied our eH l proprietary ROI methodology to the results to determine the average ROI and ab payback period that the surveyed companies realized from deploying the Riverbed olG solution.
On average, the surveyed companies achieved IT budget savings of $46,719 per 100 users in hardware, software, and bandwidth costs, while IT operations costs reductions contributed a further savings of $661 per 100 users.
IDC found that improved user productivity accounted for the greatest benefits from deploying the Riverbed Steelhead appliances. On average, users increased their productive time by 7.4%, saving 10.6 hours annually. These savings averaged $102,741 per 100 users per year.
After deploying Riverbed Steelhead appliances, the companies were able to increase the number of users supported by each IT full-time employee by 5%. This resulted in average savings of $4,848 per 100 users over three years.
Additionally, companies benefited from the ability to grow revenue through previously impossible business strategies and to pursue new projects that could be geographically dispersed, as well as the ability to share work more effectively across offices around the world. This revenue growth averaged $3,219 per 100 users over three years, resulting in average total benefits from the deployment of $157,889 per 100 users over three years (see Table 1). From these benefits, IDC deducts the opportunity cost of not having the initial investment in some other instrument yielding 12%. For the surveyed companies, this results in a net present value (NPV) of the benefits of $103,321 per 100 users.
T A B L E 1 R O I A n al y s i s f o r D e p l o y i n g t h e R i v e r b e d W D S S o l u t i o n
Metric Average
Three-year savings and revenue benefits* $157,889
Three-year cost of investment* $21,360
Net present value of bene... [download for more]
