Silver Peak Systems, the leader in accelerating data over distance, has been selected by CSR plc (LSE: CSR) (NASDAQ: CSRE), a global provider of innovative silicon and software platforms for consumer electronics applications, to help improve the performance of interactive applications between the company’s network of global offices.
With its corporate headquarters in Cambridge, CSR relies heavily on centrally hosted services that require fast, reliable access at anytime from anywhere in the world. By deploying Silver Peak’s software-based acceleration at all 26 of its sites, covering around 2,100 employees across 10 countries, CSR has reduced network costs substantially and reduced network traffic significantly, ensuring a consistent application experience for all employees.
Following the acquisition of Expand Networks by Riverbed, CSR looked to Silver Peak’s platinum EMEA partner, Response Data Communications (RDC), for a new solution to improve application performance over distance. Most notably, CSR needed to optimize the performance of various interactive applications, including Perforce, Microsoft file services (CIFS), and engineering design tools using computer aided design (CAD). Following a three-month evaluation period of leading WAN optimization vendors, Silver Peak’s Virtual Acceleration Open Architecture (VXOA) software emerged as the clear choice for accelerating the CSR infrastructure, being added to the mix just four weeks before the end of the assessment process.
“With our business relying so heavily on instant access to centrally saved data, it is imperative that we minimize the amount of graphical data delivered across the WAN,” said Mark Taylor, senior support analyst at CSR. “The applications we use are essential to the quality of our work. Therefore, it is crucial that they are not impacted by other activities taking place in the same office, for example, another user downloading a large file over FTP. We tested a lot of solutions, with Silver Peak winning on performance. In fact, Silver Peak outperformed its competitors in 95 percent of the tests we ran.”
Silver Peak’s VXOA software was selected specifically for its excellent performance capabilities, in particular the deduplication algorithm and ability to manage the devices from a single pane of glass. It uses real-time network optimization techniques to improve application performance over distance. This includes Network Acceleration to overcome WAN latency, Network Integrity to correct packet delivery issues and prioritise time sensitive traffic, and Network Memory to maximise WAN bandwidth utilization.
“Since deploying Silver Peak’s software, we are not only seeing significant improvements in application performance and file transfers, but we have saved administrative overhead by eliminating the need for dedicated proxy servers for our video streaming,” continued Taylor. “The support we have had from both Silver Peak and RDC has been first class. Furthermore, we have seen a significant reduction in network related complaints, which is good news for our IT helpdesk and the productivity of our employees.”
“Organizing and transferring large volumes of data is fast becoming a reality for international organizations, such as CSR,” said Jason Evans, managing director at Response Data Communications. “Silver Peak’s software overcomes common bandwidth, latency and packet loss issues, thus enabling organizations to quickly and effectively transfer large documents, without affecting the remote user experience – ensuring a rapid return on investment.”
“CSR is a good example of how the success of business is increasingly dependent on seamless data mobility over distance,” said Jeff Aaron, VP marketing at Silver Peak. “In order to achieve this, organizations need to ensure that the underlying network infrastructure is able to cope with large volumes of traffic being used by distributed employees. We are thrilled that the Silver Peak solution has enabled CSR to benefit from faster application performance and the substantial cost savings that come from a fully optimised network.”