International Union for Conservation of Nature

Overview

IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature, was founded in 1948, and is the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it.

IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature, was founded in 1948, and is the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it. IUCN works with 1,400 member organizations and the input of 16,000 experts worldwide.

Its most high-profile projects include the Bonn Challenge, a global forest reforestation effort, The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™, and Mangroves for the Future, an initiative to build the resilience of coastal communities in Asia against tsunamis and other disasters.

Francois Jolles, with a background in multinational fast moving consumer goods businesses, was appointed CIO in 2014 to develop and implement a new global IT strategy. One of his initial focus areas was to globalize IUCN’s network as a foundation for the longer-term goal of digitizing the organization.

“IUCN has offices in more than 50 countries around the world and a fast and reliable connection between them is paramount, yet we were relying on each location to arrange its connection to the Internet,” said Francois Jolles, CIO, IUCN. “A new infrastructure will greatly improve the way different IUCN teams – including those located in the most remote areas – can access our global applications and collaborate with one another.”

“It’s important we demonstrate to our donors that we’re using their money wisely. A big part of that is showing that we stay efficient and share our knowledge effectively.”

Solution

• Riverbed SteelCentral to monitor, troubleshoot, and analyze application performance across the global network
• Riverbed Acceleration to simplify management of remote IT, consolidate remote infrastructure in the datacenter, and improve data security and back-ups
• SteelHead to optimize application performance and increase productivity

We’re also able to now send more documents digitally, enabling greater collaboration and reducing the use of paper documents. So, in sustainability terms, Riverbed fully supports the direction we’re heading.

Francois Jolles

International Union for Conservation of Nature

I always look for evidence that we’ve done what was promised. With data center replication, we cut times from 24 hours to less than an hour.

Francois Jolles

International Union for Conservation of Nature