File transfers for companies in Dubai took 89 percent less time when using Riverbed application acceleration services, according to the latest results of the ESG (Enterprise Strategy Group) evaluation.
The study looked into the Riverbed Application Acceleration Services in environments that emulate a modern, distributed organisation providing core collaboration services via SaaS to employees across multiple locations worldwide.
The ESG report findings concluded, through hands-on testing and actual production use across 13 global locations, that Riverbed application acceleration solutions provide significant data reduction in file transfer and consistent acceleration of widely used SaaS applications such as Microsoft O365 and Salesforce. As more companies continue to provide broader flexibility for employees to work from anywhere, organisations can run Riverbed solutions unnoticed in the background to optimise performance and productivity for remote users, regardless of location, bandwidth or latency, often rivaling the experience achieved previously with in-office local access.
The ESG report validated Riverbed’s solutions, SaaS Accelerator and Client Accelerator, significantly and consistently accelerate data transfers to and from SaaS applications from anywhere across the globe.
The testing concluded that Riverbed significantly accelerated Microsoft O365 in every region tested. In many cases, the report noted files transfers that previously took minutes were reduced to seconds. This included reductions in file transfer times ranging from 79.2 percent in London to 89.3 percent in Dubai in the EMEA region; from 73.4 percent in New Delhi to 89.6 percent in Tokyo in APJ; and an average of 79 percent across the five U.S. cities tested: San Francisco, CA; Brisbane, CA; Nashua, NH; Brimfield, MA and Franklin, MA.
Overall, ESG found that organisations deploying Riverbed technology at scale could greatly benefit from both enhanced productivity and improved user experience while saving valuable hours of time for every user. Additionally, ESG found data reduction was remarkably consistent across all sites, averaging nearly 81 percent globally.
The report quantified the results in stating that organisations can reclaim thousands of hours of lost productivity per year even for moderate data users. In one scenario ESG modeled, a company with 10,000 workers, would recover 70,000 hours, equivalent to a full year’s time of productivity for 40 employees, or more than $3 million in productivity savings. Furthermore, ESG stated that organisations can very easily attach this technology today as part of a revised business operations plan and enable workers to be productive from anywhere – including home offices, off-site at client locations, or cafes or airports.
The ESG study started in early March when most employees were in offices and ended during the pandemic that required most employees to work from home. As employees increasingly began working remotely, they were challenged with unpredictable network performance, often magnified with multiple people within a household accessing various applications or collaboration tools simultaneously. A recent ESG survey found that 95 percent of knowledge workers reported they were working from home as a result of the pandemic, versus 10 percent previously, and the majority of those surveyed want to continue to work remotely moving forward.
“While keeping employees productive and providing a positive experience as they access applications and files in the cloud is important for normal business operations, it’s even more critical now with increasingly mobile workforces as a result of COVID-19. Riverbed Acceleration Services proved easy to deploy into our existing infrastructure and provided significant time and user experience benefits everywhere we tested,” said Tony Palmer, Senior Validation Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group.
“More than ever, organisations desperately need technology that can deliver results quickly, increase productivity and performance, and deliver a better user experience regardless of location. Even long-term, after COVID-19 passes, we expect to see greater workplace flexibility, with more employees working from anywhere,” said Subbu Iyer, Chief Marketing Officer at Riverbed. “Riverbed Acceleration Solutions play an important role in driving productivity and minimising the issues of latency and data congestion that are inhibitors to maximising the full value enterprises can achieve from SaaS applications – whether a user is working from a remote location or in an office. The report findings further validate the SaaS and client/mobile acceleration that many of our customers are already experiencing.”
Riverbed Application Acceleration Solutions
ESG validated Riverbed Application Acceleration solutions – specifically SaaS Accelerator and Riverbed Client Accelerator – as part of the technical evaluation. SaaS Accelerator is a purpose-built, software-defined, cloud-based solution, designed to ensure consistent performance of leading enterprise SaaS applications, such as Microsoft O365, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Box, and more, delivering up to a 10x increase in performance. Riverbed Client Accelerator (formerly called SteelHead Mobile) delivers leading-edge application acceleration to mobile workers anywhere. Delivered in a software form factor, Client Accelerator extends best-in-class optimisation and acceleration technology to mobile agents – laptops or desktops –, providing accelerated access to on-prem, IaaS, or SaaS-based applications even in less than ideal conditions. Riverbed Client Accelerator eliminates performance problems caused by unpredictable network latency and competition among applications; and for administrators, Client Accelerator offers a flexible, scalable management tool that streamlines provisioning of large-scale remote and mobile deployments. Riverbed Application Acceleration solutions are part of the company’s Network and Application Performance Platform, which enables organisations to maximise performance and visibility for networks and applications.
To receive more technical data and access the full ESG report, Riverbed Acceleration Services: Boosting Productivity and Collaboration with Fast, Predictable Access to Office 365 for Users Anywhere, click here
