Science & Technology
Science and Technology
Science and Technology
Tue, November 24, 2009
Mon, November 23, 2009 Stena Drills Down to Reduce Bandwidth and IT Infrastructure Costs With Riverbed Steelhead Appliances
SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - November 23, 2009) - [ Riverbed Technology ] (
Ian Fraser, IT manager at Stena, explains, "Prior to the installation of the Steelhead appliances, we were looking at increasing our bandwidth from a 512Kbps connection to a 1Mbps connection. This would have almost doubled our IT infrastructure costs. Riverbed is one of the few technologies we've found that has helped us to cut overall IT infrastructure costs while improving overall employee productivity and collaboration. We're extremely pleased with these results."
Stena Drilling is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Swedish company Stena AB, one of the world's foremost independent drilling contractors. The company is headquartered in Scotland, with offshore drilling rigs located across the globe. The worldwide spread of its staff and operations meant that Stena was investing considerable amounts of money on satellite connections without the ability to utilize all of the accessible bandwidth.
To help solve this problem Stena had already implemented a data prioritization system that gave precedence to important communication channels such as email and VoIP. However, this approach offered no real-time acceleration. Following a recommendation from an IT executive at a major oil company that is a Riverbed customer, Stena's IT organization contacted the Riverbed value-added reseller EssentialNET and distributor, Zycko, for recommendations on [ WAN optimization solutions ]. Due to the nature of Stena's drilling operations, with most of the sites located offshore, a combination of Riverbed Steelhead appliances and Steelhead Mobile was proposed.
The companies teamed up to run a one-month trial between headquarters and the Stena Spey rig in the North Sea. The trial was so successful that Stena initiated the installation of Steelhead appliances on all of its rigs worldwide. As Fraser explains, "We saw an immediate improvement and were delighted with the reduced time taken to download files. A 2MB file used to take five minutes to download; now, with Riverbed, it takes just 10 seconds."
Stena has also seen a 2.5x increase in bandwidth capacity, which has enabled the company to avoid a costly bandwidth upgrade. Fraser comments, "Riverbed has actually provided us with faster application download speeds than we would have experienced had we just doubled the bandwidth capacity."
Stena has now deployed nine Steelhead appliances throughout its worldwide rig and at various onshore locations.
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 performance results of Riverbed solutions and customer cost savings 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-Q filed with the SEC on October 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.
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.
