Managed services specialist InTechnology has reported growing interest in its Riverbed-powered WAN optimisation offering, signing up two of the UK’s top 10 law firms over the past two months. It anticipates concluding another half dozen deals in the next quarter.

InTechnology already provides its managed LANnet MPLS network to both Shoosmiths and Pinsent Masons, and it has recently deployed eight of Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances across the Shoosmiths network with a similar UK-wide roll-out planned for Pinsent Masons.

The wide-area data services (WDS) technology enables WAN bandwidth optimisation, application acceleration, IT consolidation and faster WAN backup. It also provides the perfect environment for maximising the value of LANnet, facilitating the introduction of additional network services including data replication, online backup and archiving, virtual servers, voice and hosting.

Shoosmiths’ IS Director David Bason has already seen a positive impact on daily operations: "We were experiencing a number of performance issues with applications which were not really designed to run over the WAN. Yet supporting the business in its critical ability to locate staff across the firm without any technical limitations was key to the on-going success of the business. The installation of the Riverbed WAN accelerators was seen as a possible solution to these problems but they have delivered far more. 

We have been able to implement a new WAN with just 60% of the bandwidth originally planned, thus delivering significant cost savings. We’ve also seen improvements in remote access of centrally held documentation, plus a very impressive 99% reduction in the time taken to backup applications over the WAN: one system that used to back-up in six hours now takes just 10 minutes.”

Mark Halpin, InTechnology’s legal sector manager, is not surprised by the increasing uptake of WDS: “Riverbed state that enterprises can improve application performance across the network typically by 5 to 50 times and in some cases up to 100 times, and can simultaneously reduce WAN bandwidth utilization by 65% to 95%. These results don’t just deliver financial and operational gains but also allow businesses to take advantage of their networks, infrastructure and applications in ways that they had never imagined possible.”