Science & Technology 
Science and Technology
Science and Technology 
Thu, March 12, 2009
Wed, March 11, 2009
Tue, March 10, 2009
Riverbed Technology: Carhartt Trusts Riverbed to Support International Growth, Accelerate Collaboration
SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - March 10, 2009) - Riverbed Technology (
Established in 1889, Carhartt develops durable, premium, high-quality products and services for workers on and off the job. Headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, with more than 4,500 employees worldwide, Carhartt is privately owned and managed.
Over the last few years, Carhatt's European operations have expanded. However, the company maintains a centralized IT model, with key applications and servers located at its headquarters in Dearborn. As the number of remote employees grew, the ability to access centrally located applications and data in real-time was becoming more critical. Carhartt's IT group recognized that in order to accommodate the expansion of the business, it would need to add WAN optimization to its infrastructure.
"We were growing fast and wanted to be sure that all of our employees were able to access and collaborate on critical applications in a timely manner," said Asif Khan at Carhartt. "And, we did not want to increase our bandwidth spending. We needed to do more with the infrastructure we already had. We quickly realized that WAN optimization could provide significant performance improvements while helping us control costs."
Carhartt's IT team installed an alternative WAN optimization product from a competing vendor at two locations, but was disappointed with the complexity of the offering. The company then turned to Riverbed.
Carhartt evaluated Riverbed during a one-month-long free trial and then quickly moved to install Steelhead appliances at locations in Amsterdam, Mexico, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee. "We were very impressed with Riverbed," said Khan. "The ease of installation and management, the performance improvement and the reporting were night and day compared to the competition."
Following installation of the Steelhead appliances, Carhartt has experienced a 40% reduction in traffic on the WAN, while file download times for a 10MB database have dropped from 8-9 minutes to 2-3 minutes. User complaints about application performance have dropped dramatically at locations with Steelhead appliances installed.
"We have employees who travel regularly between our remote locations and do notice significant differences among the sites that do not yet have a Steelhead appliance installed even though these sites have the same WAN speed circuits," explained Khan. "Our traveling employees notice the difference and complain about the performance when they don't get the benefits that the Steelhead appliances provide. It is a real pain point."
The company plans to install additional Steelhead appliances at locations in North America and Europe in 2009.
With the ease-of-installation that Riverbed provides, getting a new Steelhead appliance up and running takes Carhartt just minutes. "It now takes us about 20 minutes to configure a Steelhead appliance here at headquarters," said Khan. "We then ship it out to the remote location where a PC technician spends five minutes connecting cables. I couldn't ask for an easier or more user friendly product."
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements relating to the expected demand for Riverbed's products and services, statements regarding customer payback following implementation of Riverbed solutions that may suggest likely or certain outcomes, 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-K filed with the SEC on February 23, 2009. 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 IT infrastructure performance company. The Riverbed family of wide area network (WAN) optimization solutions liberates businesses from common IT constraints by increasing application performance, enabling consolidation, and providing enterprise-wide network and application visibility -- all while eliminating the need to increase bandwidth, storage or servers. Thousands of companies with distributed operations use Riverbed to make their IT infrastructure faster, less expensive and more responsive. Additional information about Riverbed (
Riverbed Technology, Riverbed, Steelhead, RiOS, Interceptor, Think Fast, the Riverbed logo, Mazu, Profiler and Cascade are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riverbed Technology, Inc. All other trademarks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.