SAN FRANCISCO—November 02, 2010— Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD), the IT performance company, announced today that the Generali Group in Poland has deployed 20 Riverbed® Steelhead® appliances and Steelhead Mobile across its operations to improve employee collaboration and productivity. With the Riverbed solution installed, Generali has experienced up to an 80 percent reduction in the time taken to access applications over the wide area network (WAN). Prior to the Riverbed deployment, users could sometimes wait for an hour to access documents; with Riverbed deployed, they can now collaborate on files in as little as seconds, which has resulted in increased employee productivity.
Generali Group is one of the largest financial and insurance groups in the world and for almost 180 years has been synonymous with safety and reliability for millions of people looking to secure their future. In Europe, Generali occupies the third position in terms of gross premiums written. Present in Poland since 1999, Generali offers a comprehensive range of insurance products for individual customers and businesses, including life insurance, motor insurance, participation in the Open Pension Fund and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA).
Generali employees transmit large amounts of data across the WAN daily and use a range of CIFS and HTTP applications designed specifically for insurance companies, as well as Lotus Notes. Throughout the 80 Generali offices located in Poland, employees were struggling to access documents and files over the WAN. Marcin Piwko, the deputy IT director responsible for IT infrastructure at Generali Group, explains, "The IT support team were receiving a number of calls daily from our employees complaining about the time taken to download documents. In some cases users were waiting more than an hour to access files. As an insurance company dealing with a large number of claims each day, this was an unacceptable situation that was adversely affecting employee productivity."
Generali's technology partner, Trecom, suggested the WAN optimization solution from Riverbed to address the application performance issues. Generali deployed Steelhead appliances in 20 branch offices and deployed Steelhead Mobile in offices with less than five employees and for a number of remote laptop workers. "With the Riverbed solutions installed we saw an immediate improvement in file download speeds," says Piwko. "Now, employees based in different offices can work on the same document as if they were in the same room. The difference this has made to our company's productivity and efficiency levels is unprecedented. In addition, the calls to the IT support desk have reduced considerably, so now the IT team can work on other projects that deliver value back to the business."
"Riverbed has enabled our employees to be highly productive and efficient, which is a huge benefit to any organization," continues Piwko. "Based on the efficiency gains we're experiencing, the Riverbed solution is now a critical part of our IT infrastructure."
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 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 28, 2010. 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.
Riverbed delivers application performance for the globally connected enterprise. With Riverbed, enterprises can successfully and intelligently implement strategic initiatives such as virtualization, consolidation, cloud computing, and disaster recovery without fear of compromising performance. By giving enterprises the platform they need to understand, optimize and consolidate their IT, Riverbed helps enterprises to build a fast, fluid and dynamic IT architecture that aligns with the business needs of the organization. Additional information about Riverbed (NASDAQ: RVBD) is available at www.riverbed.com.
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