Brazil-Based Electric Power Distributor Implements Riverbed

Riverbed Technology announced that electric power distributor Escelsa – part of the EDP Energias de Portugal holding – has implemented Riverbed wide area network (WAN) optimization technology to support its IT consolidation initiative. With Riverbed, the company was able to consolidate its IT infrastructure and reduce costs without sacrificing end-user performance. Application performance has improved up to fourfold, improving employee productivity, while bandwidth utilization has decreased dramatically, reducing IT costs. The company now has an agile and reliable communication system for its dispersed office locations in the cities of Vitória, São Paulo and Mogi das Cruzes.

There were several business drivers moving Escelsa to consolidate its IT infrastructure. According to Renato Araújo, Escelsa IT infrastructure analyst, the IT consolidation project had three goals: "The first was to share critical data across three company sites, one in Mogi das Cruzes (SP), one in São Paulo (city) and one in Vitória (ES). The second was to reduce congestion of the existing WAN links, which had already reached their maximum capacity. Lastly, the team looked to the consolidation project to reduce costs."

With about 7.6 million clients of electrical energy in two States of Brazil – São Paulo and Espírito Santo – operations at Escelsa demand a high volume of data exchange every day. With that demand, BRASP, a Riverbed value added reseller, presented Riverbed WAN optimization technology as a solution that would accelerate application performance over the WAN, while also reducing bandwidth usage. After a proof of concept, the Escelsa IT team decided to implement the Riverbed Steelhead appliances to address its three goals. According to Marcos Brum, BRASP director, "At first, Escelsa had thought about doubling total necessary bandwidth. However, with the Riverbed solution they managed to reduce bandwidth usage over the link by 55% and made application performance up to 4X faster."

Araújo says the benefits gained with Riverbed WAN optimization are visible. "We are still making other changes in our IT infrastructure, but in relation to the Riverbed solution, the improvement in IT infrastructure performance is clearly seen by all users, especially those in search of information in corporate network files."

The Riverbed appliances were first installed at the Vitória unit, and as a result the users there were able to access applications up to four times faster than the Mogi das Cruzes site, which had not implemented the technology yet. According to Araújo, users noticed the difference immediately. When Vitória’s employees visited the Mogi das Cruzes office, which was still without a Steelhead appliance, they immediately noticed the decline in performance.

"With Riverbed our employees are now able to do simple tasks that were previously a nightmare to accomplish, like listing folders of a remote server as if they were locals," says Araújo.