Riverbed announced the results of the ESG (Enterprise Strategy Group) technical evaluation that tested Riverbed Application Acceleration Services in environments that emulate a modern, distributed organization 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, organizations can run Riverbed solutions unnoticed in the background to optimize 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% in London to 89.3% in Dubai in the EMEA region; from 73.4% in New Delhi to 89.6% in Tokyo in APJ; and an average of 79% across the five U.S. cities tested: San Francisco, CA; Brisbane, CA; Nashua, NH; Brimfield, MA and Franklin, MA. Overall, ESG found that organizations 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% globally.
The report quantified the results in stating that organizations 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 organizations 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.
A recent ESG survey found that 95% of knowledge workers reported they were working from home as a result of the pandemic, versus 10% 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, organizations 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 minimizing the issues of latency and data congestion that are inhibitors to maximizing 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 optimization 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 organizations to maximize performance and visibility for networks and applications.
ESG began conducting its technical evaluation in March 2020. The report used three specific metrics for the evaluation: latency as it relates to application performance, data reduction specific to network efficiency, and productivity savings. ESG personnel tested SaaS Accelerator and Client Accelerator from locations in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
