Case Study: Alfa Bank achieves 40% bandwidth reduction, $180K telecom savings and 3.5x faster application performance with Riverbed SteelHead appliances

Alfa Bank - Customer Case Study

Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest private bank with over 300 branches and centralized IT in Moscow, faced high per-megabyte telecom costs on a 2 Mbps MPLS WAN and slowing mission‑critical applications when traffic spiked. The bank wanted to control telecom expenses, defer a costly bandwidth upgrade, and speed up application performance for branch employees.

Alfa Bank ran pilots and chose Riverbed WAN optimization, deploying 39 SteelHead appliances and the SteelCentral management console across its data centers and major branches. The rollout cut bandwidth use by 40%, saved about $180,000 in six months, delayed a bandwidth upgrade by nearly two years, increased data transfer speeds 3.5×, and delivered noticeably faster applications and a rapid ROI.

Alfa Bank

Alexander Yakovlev

Responsible for Alfa Bank Regional Infrastructure