DiData procures Riverbed technology across 119 Austrade sites

Dimension Data has procured and provided Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances to half of Austrade’s offices including Sydney, Canberra, and all of the Americas (USA, Canada and South America), with the remainder expected to be deployed by June 2008.

Austrade has also purchased 250 licences for the Steelhead Mobile client software for those staff that travel frequently or do not have permanent offices, said a spokesperson for DiData.

“We can’t give out to much information about the project. But we can confirm that DiData was chosen to provide the products for Austrade and to provide vendor maintenance of the products for four years,” the DiData spokesperson said.

Sitting within the Australian Government portfolio of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Austrade provides advice, market intelligence and support to Australian companies involved in exporting, as well as businesses interested in foreign investment. It has 119 offices in more than 60 countries.

Geoff Harders, global manager of service delivery and systems support for Austrade said the Riverbed Steelhead products will overcome many of the issues facing locations with limited bandwidth by speeding up download time and optimising application performance.

“Austrade’s business is all about collaboration and connecting Australian exporters with overseas buyers and suppliers,” he explains. “It’s critical that our central repository of information – often containing sizeable files – can be quickly and easily accessed by our staff so they can then help our clients.”

The Riverbed product gives Austrade the ability to deliver over what can be considered fairly mediocre data communications capabilities in terms of bandwidth and latency. This increases Austrade’s ability to provide more complex information to employees, claimed Harders.

Many of Austrade’s employees are mobile workers who are based in home or serviced offices. As such, the Riverbed Steelhead Mobile client software weighed heavily in the agency’s decision when choosing a vendor, he said.

“One of the major differentiators for us was the Steelhead Mobile client software, which allows notebook computers to share the same speed and security benefits as the desktop computers, as well as the breadth of files the Steelhead appliances can accelerate,” he commented.

According to Harders, Austrade’s offices range from one or two person set-ups in remote locations to offices of more than 200 in places such as Sydney and Canberra. The diverse range of products offered by Riverbed, including the Steelhead Mobile software client and an array of desktop appliances, means Austrade can “saturate its environment” with Riverbed technology.

“The Riverbed solution fits both our small and large offices, bridging the gaps between each,” he explains. “It’s also very quick and easy to set up for deployment because you can configure it through the Riverbed Central Management Console, then roll it out to the individual machines from there.”

A simple setup was of particular importance to Austrade, as the staff responsible for the installation of the Steelhead products are not necessarily IT experts. While Austrade developed a training video and manual to support the rollout, it was still essential to have products that could be quickly and easily deployed, Harders said.

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