Simpson

IN BRIEF

Industry

• Manufacturing

Challenges

• Improve performance of thin-client application access
• Avoid bandwidth upgrades to remote locations
• Provide international offices with local-like access to data

Solution

• Steelhead appliances were deployed in each of 2 remote offices and 2 data centers

Benefits

• Eliminated the need to build a $300,000 Asia data center
• At least 45% (as much as 81%) reduction in overall bandwidth utilization
• 85% reduction in print traffic
• Accelerated response times for applications running over Citrix ICA

Simpson

Riverbed Steelhead Products Accelerate Citrix XenApp for a Global Manufacturing Organization

Simpson Manufacturing Co., Inc. (http://www.simpsonmfg.com/index.html) is a growing international company in the manufacture and marketing of building products.

Through their subsidiaries, Simpson Strong-Tie Company, Inc. and Simpson Dura-Vent Company, Inc., the company designs, engineers, and manufactures structural connectors, anchors, and other products for new construction, retrofitting, and do-it-yourself (DIY) markets;

Simpson Manufacturing also designs and manufactures venting systems for gas and wood-burning appliances.

Simpson Manufacturing Co. has been recognized in the media for its quality and growth. Forbes named Simpson to its list of the “200 Best Small Companies” and BusinessWeek named Simpson to its list of Hot Growth Companies. Simpson Manufacturing Co. is publicly traded on the NYSE and is part of the San Francisco Chronicle 200.

Challenge: Enabling Collaboration for Citrix Thin Client Environments

As a distributed, diversified manufacturing company, Simpson depends on its wide-area network to connect its locations, staff, and systems together. “We have 38 connected sites in 11 countries supported by 5 data centers. We are a Microsoft-oriented shop – we depend on Exchange, file sharing and SQL-based ERP applications,” said Eugene Alfaro, manager of Global IT operations for Simpson Manufacturing. “But what’s unique about us is our wide adoption and implementation of thin-client computing. This is a key IT strategy for us. All of our locations use HP thin clients at the edge and access applications via Citrix XenApp.”

Despite using XenApp for application delivery, Alfaro discovered that the company’s approx. 1200 knowledge workers were generally dissatisfied with the inconsistent performance and

responsiveness of applications. “If you think that waiting a minute or two for a file to download is a painful experience, imagine sometimes waiting 30 or 40 seconds when you do a simple key stroke. That’s what our users were subjected to,” recalled Alfaro.

“Not only that, but we were thinking about building out a new data center in Asia to get around these problems in that region. That would mean a significant capital investment, dedication of operational resources and a lot more time spent traveling by IT personnel. That’s not good for morale nor productivity. And when you’re just 16 operational and support IT staff for an organization this large and distributed, it’s critical that every resource be efficiently utilized and maximized.”

Solution: Steelhead Appliances Overcome Citrix Limitations

Based on previous experiences, Alfaro knew what WAN optimization could do for typical thick- client environments, but wasn’t sure if the same results would be possible in a Citrix environment.

“Wanting qualitative and quantitative data, we did an evaluation with multiple products – Riverbed Steelhead and Cisco WAAS.”

“We started with a demo of Cisco WAAS together with NetQOS. The product fell short of our expectations, and had a high level of complexity. With our small staff we couldn’t handle that. The problems came down to their inability to provide the acceleration our users needed for Citrix, but also no meaningful roadmap that we could see to fix that problem. In addition, Cisco wanted us to buy a third-party reporting tool, which would have ended up costing more than the WAN optimization solution itself!”

Alfaro continued, “We then brought in Riverbed. We configured the Steelhead devices to accelerate Citrix traffic – a few extra steps were required beyond the basic setup – and then we let them loose. We immediately saw the type of results that we were hoping for. Where users were experiencing delays as high as 30 or 40 seconds, and on average six to 10 seconds, we now saw near instantaneous response. Bandwidth utilization was cut by at least 45% on average and as much as 81%.”

Alfaro also described the results of optimizing print traffic. “Print jobs that were taking 90 seconds or longer to start were down to one or two seconds. We saw phenomenal bandwidth reduction – 85% on average, with peaks above 96% reduction. This made as much of a difference to us as the Citrix acceleration did because it meant more room for important interactive traffic.”

Benefits: A consolidated, productive thin client environment

The major benefit for Simpson Manufacturing was the ability to accelerate their distributed workforce. “Our environment is complex,” noted Alfaro, “and it’s important to us that our employees everywhere feel like they have consistently near local-like performance. That certainly wasn’t the case before, but now we’re in sight of achieving that goal. With Steelhead appliances we can ensure users have fast access to applications over Citrix, whether that application is in a local data center, overseas, or even in another office.”

Alfaro continued, “This meant that IT support has to deal with fewer dissatisfied users. We have to spend less time at odd hours supporting remote locations. And that means we can spend our time on more strategic projects that contribute to the bottom line of the company.”

Beyond performance, however, Alfaro noted that there were a number of infrastructural improvements that would directly impact the company’s bottom line. “Well, we saw big bandwidth savings. That enables us to push out any upgrades further into the future that we’d otherwise have to deal with.

“But the really big win was our ability to avoid building an Asia data center. We costed out this undertaking and the investment for the business would have been $300,000 for the first year, and ongoing maintenance after that. That doesn’t include IT management time to oversee the operation, either. Instead we were able to deploy one Steelhead appliance and get the performance that our users need. The ROI on this was instantaneous, and the savings from this one project enabled us to pay for our Steelhead investment.”

SUMMARY

Simpson Manufacturing wanted to leverage the benefits of WAN optimization for its all-Citrix, thin client environment. As a globally distributed manufacturing organization, it was key to achieve as close to local-like performance for all of its knowledge workers to manage costs and improve user satisfaction.

After evaluating Cisco WAAS and Riverbed Steelhead, Simpson Manufacturing chose Riverbed. Response times for application access via Citrix XenApp went from 30 or 40 seconds (intermittently) for some operations to near local-like performance, and bandwidth use was reduced by at least 45% in one location and as much as 81% in another.

In addition, Simpson Manufacturing was able to avoid investing in a new data center by deploying a Steelhead appliance in its largest China facility. This saved the company an estimated $300,000 immediately, and provided an immediate return on investment on Simpson’s Steelhead appliance deployment.

*Where users were experiencing delays as high as 30 or 40 seconds... we now saw near instantaneous response.

*We saw phenomenal bandwidth reduction of print traffic – 81.5% on average, with peaks of 96% reduction.

*We were able to avoid a $300,000 investment in a new data center and instead buy one Steelhead appliance.