Anticimex

Riverbed and Anzena deliver network optimization to centralize IT service delivery for Swedish pest control specialist

Case Study (PDF)

Overview
Challenges
Solution
Benefits
Related Products

Anticimex is an international pest control specialist. Formed in Sweden in 1934, the business has operations in 16 countries. Its services span insurance, building management and food safety.

It is an increasingly digital business. Anticimex uses cameras, traps and data collection points that are remote and connected and shares reports in real-time with customers. The nature of pest control is local, and Anticimex staff need to be mobile and collaborative in order to provide their services to customers.

Challenges

Improve network performance to support move to centralized IT service delivery
Provide a platform for growth of digital services
Reduce the strain on internal IT resource

Solution

Riverbed SteelHead for optimized WAN performance
Centralized management of application performance with Riverbed SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead
Managed service from local Riverbed partner, Anzena

Benefits

Creates a high-performance national network capable of supporting centralized IT service delivery
Establishes platform for development of new, digital services
Reduces maintenance and licence costs, and frees internal resource to focus on high-value IT projects

With the combination of Riverbed technology and Anzena’s expertise and knowledge of our business, we have been able to create a solution that has performed on every level; more network uptime, faster connectivity and the reassurance of a full backup.

Sepand Astaneh

Director of Engineering

Anticimex

Challenges: Building a platform to centralize IT services

The Swedish head office is in Stockholm, and there are 36 branch offices and 10 satellite offices. These range in size from 100 staff to five or six. Tommy Bergqvist, CEO at local IT consultancy, Anzena, explains: “Anticimex had an MPLS copper connection going into each office, but the bandwidth varied greatly. There were 50mbps in some of the larger offices, less than 10mbps in the smaller ones.”

With the business looking to centralize much of its IT services, such inconsistency was unacceptable. “We wanted to eliminate branch file servers – with all the local maintenance and back-ups involved, replacing them with a centralized server. But that is unworkable if the office is 600km from Stockholm and you’re working with such slow MPLS speeds,” says Sepand Astaneh, Senior Operations Engineer at Anticimex. “We needed to maximise our connectivity.”

The Riverbed SteelHeads are very intuitive to use. We created a five-page installation guide, sent it to the branch office and someone with a simple grasp of IT could plug it in.

Oscar Winkelmann

IT Operations Manager

Anticimex

Solution: Accelerated delivery of applications

Specialising in datacentre solutions, storage and cloud services, Anzena prides itself on having long term relationships with its customers. Anticimex had been a customer for four years and had recently completed a service desk project with Anzena, reducing start-up times from 15 minutes to 40 seconds.

Anzena asked if it could examine the connectivity challenge, and created a Proof of Concept for one office using Riverbed Steelheads. With the PoC deemed a success, Anzena and Astaneh started work on building a business case for every branch.

“The PoC went well, but it involved an office close to Stockholm. We wanted to see how fast we could go with a semi-good connection at a more remote branch,” says Bergqvist. “Also, the Riverbed solution would be a sizeable investment, and we wanted the board to be clear how this would benefit the business,” continues Astaneh.

The Riverbed solution consists of Riverbed SteelHeads in five of Anticimex’s larger offices, acting as regional centres and Riverbed SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead is used to proactively manage its applications.

“The Riverbed SteelHeads are very intuitive to use,” says Oscar Winkelmann, IT Operations Manager, Anticimex. “We created a five-page installation guide, sent it to the branch office and someone with a simple grasp of IT could plug it in. We didn’t have to physically visit and manually install. Once they were in place, Riverbed helped configure SteelCentral. It was all very easy.”

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Benifits: More uptime, better backups

The solution also includes a three year hosting services agreement with Anzena. If Anticimex experiences any problems with the solution, the IT team can turn to Anzena for support and also rely on the Anzena consultants to provide weekly reporting on network traffic and storage space.

Winkelmann says the Riverbed solution met every promise in the business case. It has delivered more network uptime, faster connectivity and full back up.

“We’ve been able to create guaranteed SLAs, for the first time,” he says. “And it’s nice not to have the problem of figuring out which local file server has stopped working overnight. That stress has disappeared completely.”

This has delivered the promised savings on local file server maintenance. For Winkelmann’s team, time that has been saved from fixing issues with local file servers can now be spent on new projects.

“Centralization was necessary, but we continue with a hybrid approach. We’re not jumping fully into the cloud – some CRM aspects may be kept locally, while Business Intelligence will go to the cloud. It’s just good to be in a position where the network isn’t the roadblock.”

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SteelHead offers industry-leading secure optimization of all applications across networks. Learn how Riverbed can help improve your hybrid WAN performance.

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SteelCentral Ensure service quality, network security and fully optimize hybrid IT resources with a unified network performance management solution that provides broad visibility and analytics across all networks and applications. Learn more.

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