Case Study: CSX achieves 5x faster remote application performance and rapid ROI with Riverbed SteelHead appliances

CSX - Customer Case Study

CSX Corporation, a major U.S. rail and intermodal transportation provider with a 21,000-mile network and 650 branches, centralized nearly all server services and deployed Citrix thin clients, only to find WAN latency made web browsing, Outlook and even Excel painfully slow—remote users often waited five to ten minutes. The company needed to accelerate hundreds of applications (Oracle, Java web apps, SharePoint and more) across its consolidated infrastructure while retaining centralized IT.

After lab testing multiple vendors, CSX deployed Riverbed Steelhead appliances in a phased rollout (out-of-path at the data center and virtual in-path via WCCP at remote sites). The solution eliminated about 15 TB/month of duplicate WAN traffic and achieved reductions of ~91% on SSL, ~85% on CIFS and >50% on HTTP, delivering LAN-like performance, cutting support complaints, delaying a PC refresh and paying back the investment in roughly eight to nine months with substantial productivity gains.

CSX

Nat Thomas

Technical Director