Cutting Costs with Wide Area Data Services

Organizations of all sizes strive to be more productive and run low cost operations. Particularly in difficult economic times, many organizations will evaluate various cost-cutting initiatives in order to weather the storm. However, enterprises need to be careful to pursue cost cutting measures that won't negatively impact day-to-day operations or constrain long term growth. Employees need to do their jobs more efficiently than before, so it is vital to keep IT infrastructure up-to-date. Ideally, organizations should not make deep cuts in investments that may jeopardize future growth, such as product improvements or hiring of key personnel.

Much has been written about wide area data services (WDS) and its ability to improve productivity and collaboration across the enterprise. However, WDS investments can often be justified solely on the basis of cost savings. These cost savings can be achieved without negatively impacting operations in fact, in most instances WDS helps organizations run better while cutting costs. Riverbed has over 3500 customers, ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies, who are using our WDS solutions to reduce costs while improving productivity. Many Riverbed customers have seen a return on investment in just a few months because of the significant hard cost savings in areas such as bandwidth reduction and IT consolidation.

This paper explores how enterprises can use Riverbed solutions to cut hard costs and make the most of their existing infrastructure, without negatively impacting their operations.