WAN Optimization Magic from Riverbed - Find out what Jack did with it

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Announcer: Welcome to another day in the life of Jack the IT guy.

Jack: This new application is so slow! What’s wrong with our network?

Man 1: I need that new presentation for my meeting!

Woman 1: I’m on the road, and I can’t access my email!

Man 2: Our branch server crashed last night. Can you restore it?

Man 3: Who’s doing the backup?

Man 1: My problem!

Jack: My problem!

Man 2: Where are the tapes?

Jack: I need help!

Man 2: Me!

Jack: Me!

Man 2: Me!

Jack: No, me!

Announcer: Wow. What’s going on here? Like many businesses, Jack’s has remote offices and mobile workers all over the place, with employees that need to communicate with each other and access applications over a wide-area network. But everything is so slow! Jack’s got application problems, storage problems, and networking problems. The servers need updating and patches, the remote offices are doing their own tape backups incorrectly, the servers are filling up, and data keeps falling through the cracks! Is this as good as it gets?

Man 1: My problem!

Jack: My problem!

Man 2: Where are the tapes?

Jack: I need help!

Man 2: Me!

Jack: Me!

Man 2: Me!

Jack: No, me!

Announcer: Jack is adding more bandwidth, because he figures bigger pipes, stuff goes faster; and more branch servers, because that’s what you need to make applications work, right?

Announcer: Well, actually, you can have plenty of bandwidth and still have slow apps. Why? Latency: the back-and-forth time of chatty applications. Over a WAN, this latency gets magnified, requiring thousands of back-and-forth round trips just to get a little bit of information across the network. All those round trips can really add up. With all those servers, files, apps, mail, databases, and his tape backups to protect all that stuff, this means a whole lot of his company’s important data is out there where he doesn’t know what’s going on, or if it’s safe, or if backups are being done properly.

Slow applications, clogged pipes, unprotected data–and Jack is stuck managing all of this. Sounds like a bad situation, huh, Jack? What are you going to do about it?

Oh, I see what you’re up to.

So, Jack has consolidated all his applications, his servers and data, right here, where he can watch over them. He’s spending less on servers AND reducing his energy costs.

But now the remote employees are in trouble. Stuff that used to work is conking out. People can’t collaborate. Road warriors can’t get their hands on data when they need it. Network backups take forever. Bad for the data, bad for the workers.

Jack is in a dilemma. What to do?

Oh, yeah! Jack’s slapping on the band-aids: compression, caching, even QoS. And each one helps a little bit, but they add cost and complexity and don’t really solve the whole problem.

Now Jack has more fires to put out in more places, more devices to manage, and he’s losing time and money. Things are looking grim for Jack and his company. Events are spiraling out of control. The fate of the company rests on his shoulders! Will Jack make it?

Announcer: Riverbed Steelhead appliances and Steelhead mobile software simultaneously address bandwidth limitations, TCP performance, and application-protocol chattiness. It’s the power of these optimizations working together that delivers Riverbed’s unprecedented application performance improvements. Using their patented data-streamlining algorithms, Steelhead products can reduce WAN traffic by 60 percent to 95 percent, while also supporting quality of service. Steelhead products intercept all your TCP traffic to see if any of that data has been across the network before. If any of the same data was sent in the past, then only new data is sent, along with references to the existing data. That kind of smart thinking saves a ton of bandwidth–and enables better VoIP and video, too.

Saving bandwidth is good, but even if you had infinite bandwidth, high latency and chatty protocols can still make applications really slow.

The chattiness problem has two parts: transport-level and application-level protocols. So, Steelhead products have separate optimizations for both.

Transport streamlining makes TCP more efficient. And TCP is used by the vast majority of your application traffic. That means fewer round trips and more data per round trip, which adds up to much higher throughput.

Now we’re left with the last, and the hardest, challenge: chatty application protocols. Windows, Exchange, MS SQL, and web applications, all suffer from chatty protocols. And chatty means slow. Even simple application requests can generate hundreds, even thousands, of round trips. But, by completing what’s about to happen locally, Steelhead products eliminate almost all of them.

Steelhead products use application streamlining to accelerate the series of steps the application protocol is about to take, and keep most of the chattiness off the WAN, without ever using hard-to-manage tunnels. In other words, the fastest round trip is the one you never take. Only the Steelhead product family offers the Riverbed Optimization System and its clever combination of data streamlining, transport streamlining, and application streamlining. And that’s what delivers up to 100-times-faster application performance.

For Jack’s mobile workforce, Steelhead mobile software empowers employees anywhere to have the same great application performance that users have come to expect in Steelhead-enabled branch offices. Workers anywhere–salespeople at customer sites, executives in hotel rooms, front-line field personnel, or even engineers on oil rigs out at sea–can now collaborate with colleagues and use applications as if they were local.

Woman 2: There are design issues at sites 15 and 39. Let me check that out.

Announcer: Multi-hundred-megabyte design files, Excel spreadsheets, CRM applications, and more, can be accessed at the drop of a hat, without ever calling and complaining to Jack. Steelhead mobile software works just like Steelhead appliances do, only the software is right on your own laptop. And it works over any type of network connection.

Woman 2: I’ve updated the CAD document. That’s should fix the problem.

Announcer: Steelhead mobile connects with Steelhead appliances in the data center and ensures that you can access all of your key applications as if you were on the LAN. With Steelhead mobile software, being on the road doesn’t mean you have to be out of touch. And it certainly doesn’t mean you can’t get the job done.

Announcer: Well, it looks like Jack’s company is humming away, working like a well-oiled machine. And it’s all thanks to Jack the IT guy. And the most amazing tools in his toolkit? His Steelhead appliances and Steelhead mobile software. Now all employees have access to fast applications. Engineers in Shanghai are collaborating in real time with their colleagues in Silicon Valley. He consolidated most of his branch-office servers, and no one is complaining. The ones that are left can be backed up in just a fraction of the time it used to take. His WAN traffic is down by 80 percent, and he actually decommissioned some T1 lines.

Jack is living the IT dream, and saving his company tons of money. How about you? Wouldn’t you like to get more out of your existing network, with no changes to your applications, QoS, routers, or VoIP? Your future is now just a click away.