Psomas is a leading consulting engineering firm offering services for private companies and government agencies in the water transportation and land development markets. As a high-growth firm, Psomas needed to accelerate application performance to accommodate a changing set of demands from the business as well as employees. They needed to overcome frustrating delays that were hindering project collaboration and work sharing, avoid mishaps with miscommunication among employees, and at the same time deploy technology that could keep up with their pace of growth. After considering bandwidth upgrades and point products, Psomas decided to go with the Riverbed Steelhead solution. With Riverbed Steelhead products deployed worldwide, their employees can now share work and leverage resources wherever they happen to be.
CASE STUDY
in briefIndustry Psomas»»Engineering Psomas Achieves Global Work-Sharing and Accelerates the Challenges ® ®»» Mobile Worker with Riverbed Steelhead ProductsEnable collaboration among remote offices, field crews, and home-based Psomas is a leading consulting engineering firm offering services for private companies workers and government agencies in the water transportation and land development markets. »»Support steady company expansion, off-shoring, and changes in the workforce Psomas is ranked nationally as one of Engineering News Record's (ENR's) Top Engineering Centralize and consolidate servers into Firms. They have achieved an award-winning reputation for innovation, creativity, and »»the data center cutting-edge technical expertise. The cornerstone of their business approach is to focus on clients' long-term needs and guide strategic growth to meet those needs. Founded Solution in 1946, Psomas has grown into a full-service consulting firm with over 800 employees. »»One Steelhead appliance was deployed Their professional staff is at the forefront of technology, focusing on the technologies in each existing office that support clients' success.»»One Steelhead appliance will be Psomas has 20 offices throughout the west as well as an office in Nogales, Mexico.deployed in each future branch office»»Steelhead Mobile deployed on laptops Challenge: Sharing Work Across Offices in a High-growth Environmentfor home workers, field crews, and very small offices As a high-growth firm, Psomas needed to accelerate application performance to accom-modate a changing set of demands from the business as well as employees. "The problem Benefits was three fold," said Chris Pinckney, Chief Information Officer at Psomas. "We needed »»$1,000,000 saved annually by reclaiming to overcome frustrating delays that were hindering project collaboration and work sharing, ¼ hour per engineer daily avoid mishaps with miscommunication among employees, and at the same time deploy »»File and email servers centralized, technology that could keep up with our pace of growth."improving data freshness and decreasing maintenance costs Psomas regularly uses 300-500 MB AutoCAD and Bentley MicroStation CAD files, and must share those files among offices and mobile workers. "File sharing was a real challenge. »»Mobile workforce is integrated more effectively into company operations Our files were so large that it wasn't feasible to send them back and forth during the day with changes." Pinckney recalled, "Offices would keep their own copy of the file to work with, but that led to multiple copies of the same file that were out of sync. Field crews would often have to go back to the office in order to get updated files or, worse, would be working off of old data. We needed to have a system where all users could have access to the freshest data and didn't have to worry about whether they had the most up-to-date version of the file."In addition, Psomas has been experiencing 20% per year growth, putting a priority on sharing work with new offices. But each new office added a significant strain on its existing network infrastructure. "Bringing new offices online was a significant hurdle. We needed to do it fast and effectively. We've started implementing offshore facilities in Mexico and outsourcing to a company in the Philippines. We wanted to ensure that offices, no matter where we establish them in the world, can work in real-time."
Solution: Riverbed Steelhead Products Make All Employees Feel Local After considering bandwidth upgrades and point products, Pinckney decided to go with the Riverbed Steelhead solution. He noted that the decision was based on actual test results.CASE STUDY: Psomas
"When we tried file sharing using Steelhead appliances, the results were dramatic. About RiverbedTransfers for a completely new 325 MB file, which were infeasible before, took just Riverbed Technology is the IT infrastructure over 14 minutes with a Steelhead appliance. Transfers for an edited file took about 2 performance company. The Riverbed family minutes, the same amount of time that it takes us to access the file on a LAN." of wide area network (WAN) optimization solutions liberates businesses from common Following these results, Pinckney decided to deploy Steelhead appliances in all offices. IT constraints by increasing application "Results were pretty dramatic in our branch offices. So when our organization started p... [download for more]
