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Riverbed Technology: Employee Survey Finds That Improving Application Performance Could Be Key to Future Growth of Mobile Work

^{Published on 2009-09-21 06:16:52 - Market Wire}
 

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - September 21, 2009) - Enterprises are seeing more employees work outside of the office in an effort to take advantage of flexible work schedules and better connect with customers in the field. However, a survey conducted by Harris Interactive®, commissioned by Riverbed® Technology (NASDAQ: [ RVBD ]), found that mobile worker productivity is damaged by an inability to efficiently access business files or software remotely. The survey also found that employees(1) would work off-site more frequently if their files and software would load more quickly. The survey asked a series of questions of more than 900 U.S. adults who are employed full-time, normally work on-site, and have ever accessed business files or software stored on their employer's server/network/drives from off-site.

The survey found that:

 -- 47 percent are working off-site more often now than they were 2 years ago; -- More than half (54%) concentrate better when working off-site compared to being in the office; however, 40 percent say they would work off-site more often if their business files or software would load more quickly; and -- Two-thirds (67%) would like to be able to work off-site more frequently than they currently do. 

According to the survey, working "off-site" today means that employees are working remotely from a number of possible locations:

 -- 80 percent have accessed business files or software from home; -- 37 percent have accessed business files or software from a hotel room; -- 27 percent have accessed business files or software from another company office location; -- 20 percent have accessed business files or software from a vacation destination; -- 19 percent have accessed business files or software from an airport; -- 17 percent have accessed business files or software from a business conference; -- 13 percent have accessed business files or software from a Wi-Fi enabled public space, such as a park; and -- 11 percent have accessed business files or software from a coffee shop. 

The survey also found that, among employees who have ever accessed business files or software from a remote location:

 -- 29 percent do so at least 5 times per week; and -- 33 percent report that accessing business files or software remotely negatively affects their productivity. 

According to Riverbed, fast remote access to files is a growing challenge for companies. Companies are increasingly consolidating their data centers into a central location while employees are increasingly distributed and working from mobile computers. This puts a greater distance between employees and the files and software they need to do their jobs, which can harm productivity.

"Employees today are more connected than ever -- no matter their location. They're working from home, on the road and even on vacation," said Eric Wolford, senior vice president of marketing and business development for Riverbed. "Companies need to make it easier for employees to be productive when working off-site."

Riverbed's solutions allow even the most data-intensive industries to quickly share massive amounts of data between geographically distributed employees, in the process allowing employees working remotely to remain productive. [ Enterprises ] using Riverbed Steelhead® appliances have been able to increase the speed of business applications by up to 100 times.

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 (NASDAQ: [ RVBD ]) is available at [ www.riverbed.com ]

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.

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 July 30, 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.

Survey Methodology

Harris Interactive® fielded the Working Offsite study on behalf of Riverbed Technology, Inc. All data collection was done from March 27-March 31 and March 31-April 2, 2009 via the QuickQuery(SM) online omnibus service, among 4,391 adults aged 18 years and older, of whom 910 are employed full-time, normally work on-site, and have ever accessed business files or software stored on their employer's server/network/drives from off-site.

Results were weighted as needed to reflect the composition of the population of U.S. adult computer users using targets for region, age within gender, education, household income, race/ethnicity, and hours spent using a computer per week.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments. Therefore, Harris Interactive avoids the words "margin of error" as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among the Harris Poll Online (HPOL) database, which includes several million people who have agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to be invited to participate in the Harris Interactive online research panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

About Harris Interactive®

Harris Interactive is a global leader in custom market research. With a long and rich history in multimodal research, powered by our science and technology, we assist clients in achieving business results. Harris Interactive serves clients globally through our North American, European and Asian offices and a network of independent market research firms. For more information, please visit [ www.harrisinteractive.com ].

(1) For the purposes of this survey and throughout the remainder of the release, "employees" refers to U.S. adults ages 18+ who are employed full time, normally work on-site, and have ever accessed business files or software stored on their employer's server/network/drives from off-site.