Abacus Group PLC Deploys Riverbed's Steelhead Appliances to Optimize Distributed Business Operations
Allows Centralization of Applications While Reducing Bandwidth and Operational Costs
San Francisco, CA — February 12, 2007 — Riverbed Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: RVBD), the performance leader in wide-area data services (WDS), announced today that Abacus Group plc, a leading regional distributor of electronic components and value-added systems in Europe, has selected and deployed Riverbed’s Steelhead® WDS appliances at sites across Europe. With the Steelhead appliances deployed, Abacus has reduced its bandwidth and operational costs, while allowing its distributed work force to collaborate with nearly the same speed and efficiency as if they were local.
Abacus Group is one of the leading distributors of electronics components in Europe. Established in 1972, the company has developed both by growth in its core business and by acquisition of related businesses. Abacus now has 42 sites with 635 remote users. The company has expanded rapidly, both in the number of services provided to customers and in its physical network of UK regional and Europe-wide offices, and the strain on its IT infrastructure grew apace.
As the company grew, it sought to consolidate operations and developed centralized applications for warehousing, distribution and sales. However, the new applications, which were critical to the business, were performing poorly across the wide area network (WAN). For example, file and software updates of up to 35MB were distributed to each of Abacus’ 635 remote users on a regular basis, taking approximately 1.5 hours per site to download.
To better support its dramatic growth and improve the performance of the new applications, Abacus needed to upgrade its IT infrastructure. The company considered adding additional bandwidth as a solution, but the cost was prohibitive (over £250,000) and in any case additional bandwidth would not address the technical issues underlying the slow performance of its applications. Abacus instead turned to WDS vendors for a solution.
“We evaluated products from Peribit (acquired by Juniper Networks), Expand and Riverbed®,” said Gary Jennings, networks and security manager at Abacus. “We rejected the Peribit and Expand products because they were prohibitively difficult to install and slow to deliver a return on investment. In addition, neither offering markedly improved the performance of our key applications.” Abacus conducted a six-week pilot at three of its sites, including one of its busiest sales offices, which generates large volumes of data that must be transmitted over the WAN and was fast approaching the limit of its bandwidth capacity.
“Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances improved the performance of our collaborative applications by 5X, vastly improving the productivity of remote workers,” continued Jennings. “Users noticed a difference immediately. Workers from remote sites were now able to download files from across the WAN as if they were working on a LAN. Complaints to IT fell dramatically.”
Riverbed also delivered the ease-of-use that Abacus needed to service its distributed sites. According to Jennings, “Once we decided to move forward, we had eight sites up and running across Europe in less than two hours. Riverbed has delivered in all key areas.”
About Riverbed’s Steelhead Appliances
Riverbed’s wide-area data services (WDS) solutions enable organizations with more than one office to overcome a host of severe problems, including poor application performance and insufficient bandwidth at remote sites. By speeding the performance of applications between distributed sites, by five to 50 times and in some cases up to 100 times between enterprise datacenters and remote offices,
Riverbed’s award-winning Steelhead WDS appliances enable companies to consolidate IT, improve backup and replication processes to ensure data integrity, and improve staff productivity and collaboration. Steelhead appliances have been deployed in organizations ranging from the world’s largest corporations with offices around the globe to small companies with a couple of sites that are just
miles apart. To learn more, view Riverbed’s demo: www.riverbed.com/pr/jack.
About Riverbed®
Riverbed Technology is the performance leader in wide-area data services (WDS) solutions for companies worldwide. By enabling application performance over the wide area network (WAN) that is orders of magnitude faster than what users experience today, Riverbed is changing the way people work, and enabling a distributed workforce that can collaborate as if they were local. Additional information
about Riverbed (Nasdaq: RVBD) is available at www.riverbed.com.
About Abacus Group
Abacus Group plc is one of the leading distributors of electronic components in Europe, with directly owned companies having locations in every major European electronics market. Abacus Group companies are marketed in four groups:
Abacus Electronic Component Distribution (ECD) has a portfolio of 180 franchises within 12 trading operations providing technical distribution services through locally based sales offices. The Specialist Distribution group covers businesses offering displays and communications expertise, and includes Trident, Axess and TDC. Abacus Own Brand encompasses Dubilier, Eledis and Emcon Components
offering competitively priced, quality passives, electro-mechanical components and batteries. Alpha 3 Manufacturing provides electromechanical sub contract manufacture, under three trading operations: DEM Manufacturing, CTL Manufacturing and CCS Electronics.
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, grow market share or grow the market as a whole. 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 9, 2007. 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.
Riverbed Technology, Riverbed, Steelhead, RiOS, Interceptor, and the Riverbed logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riverbed Technology, Inc. All other trademarks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.
Media Contacts:
Kim Kapustka
415-344-4476
kim@riverbed.com
Julie Huang
Engage PR
(510) 748-8200 x209
jhuang@engagepr.com
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