Northwest Pipe
Riverbed Application Performance Platform Cuts IT Upgrade Costs by million
Challenges
- Budgetary constraints postponed infrastructure upgrades — major upgrades needed
- Rapidly expanding manufacturing data required secure backup
- Degraded application performance due to MPLS network overload
Benefits
- $1 million+ saved on IT infrastructure upgrade through SteelHead/SteelFusion solution
- Accelerated application performance via SteelHead WAN optimization, even over networks with increased traffic
- Accelerated time to resolve performance issues with SteelHead-enabled visibility into application and network performance
- Eliminated $750,000 planned expense through SteelFusion, a zero branch IT solution that centralizes data and enables instant disaster recovery at the branch
Overview
Since 1966 Northwest Pipe Company has been a leading manufacturer of welded steel pipe. Headquartered in Vancouver, Washington, the company operates nine manufacturing facilities in the US and one in Mexico.
Northwest Pipe’s network engineer, Jonathan Harris, had a lot on this plate when the economy finally turned around after the last recession. Key components of the IT environment had begun reach end-of-life, including server hardware and software at the remote sites. “Those file servers were put in service more than six years ago,” explains Harris. “Two servers from that timeframe suffered catastrophic hardware failure.” He calculated that updating the hardware and software (using the same solution architecture) would cost $160,000.
Solution
- SteelHead CX and SteelConnect EX appliances
- Riverbed Accelerator solution for zero branch IT
Having better visibility puts me so much further ahead of where I was. I’m able to troubleshoot much more clearly and see what's going on. It’s wonderful! There isn’t anybody else out there that offers a solution that could do all this. The applications are running the same or better than they did in the past. And we have all the protection we need for our data since it’s safe in the data center.
Jonathan Harris
Northwest Pipe
