WAN optimization so easy, your secretary or fundraiser can install it

I participated in a webinar recently with one of our partners SolidWorks and one of our joint customers, FKI Logistex. During the course of the presentation, Brian Hickle from FKI said something that is becoming a common theme with customers that experience deploying Riverbed in their environment.  Brian stated that Riverbed was remarkably easy to install.  So what's the big deal? Many WAN optimization vendors claim to have products that are easy to deploy.

The big deal is that Riverbed is ridiculously easy to deploy.  While other vendor's products can take a day or more to get running with the help of experienced IT personnel, Riverbed can be deployed in less than an hour in most cases and in some cases even minutes.

Why is this simplicity of deployment important?  In Brian Hickle's case, simplicity is extremely important because his company doesn't have IT staff at all of his branch offices.  Brian has to rely on local resources in each branch to do the install and in many cases that resource is the secretary!  Brian looked at other vendors, including Cisco and Bluecoat and they were just too complex to deploy.  Cisco was so difficult that 15% of Cisco's proposal was for professional services fees for installation! 

To get the Riverbed Steelhead appliances deployed, Brian did not have to solicit Riverbed's help or pay any extra fees.  He simply gave step-by-step instructions to each secretary on how to plug the device into the network, how to power it on, and how to perform the handful of configuration steps.  From unpacking to optimizing, Riverbed devices were up and optimizing in less than an hour and with no local IT support!

This reminds me of another example I ran into at a Riverbed user group meeting in Toronto a couple of months ago.  A large not-for-profit company had a similar situation where they had 27 branch offices and little IT staff so they had to rely on local fund raising personnel at each office to help with the install.  This customer actually utilized Riverbed's Central Management Console (CMC) to perform the initial configuration.  Steelhead appliances were shipped to each branch along with color-coded instructions for cabling the unit and powering it up.  That's all each fund-raiser had to do because after booting up, each Steelhead would discover the CMC sitting at the datacenter and pull down its configuration and configure itself.  Steelhead appliances deployed in minutes with no configuration touch required at the branch!

While Riverbed's Steelhead appliance continues to deliver market leading application acceleration performance and scalability, simplicity is one of the bedrocks of Riverbed's architecture and can be the trump card when it comes to choosing a WAN optimization vendor.  In the case of both FKI Logistex and the not-for-profit company, ease of deployment was an important consideration in their decision making process and Riverbed was the clear winner over vendors like Cisco and BlueCoat.