Case Study: BOBST Group achieves faster application performance and stronger data security with Riverbed SteelFusion and SteelHead

Riverbed helps global manufacturer scale its business with improved application performance and greater data security

BOBST Group, a Swiss-based global leader in packaging and label machinery with about 5,000 employees and operations in 50+ countries, faced a fragmented, aging IT estate after rapid growth and acquisitions. Each site ran its own servers, storage and backups, leaving data protection inconsistent, disaster recovery fragile, and users suffering poor network and application performance that prompted costly bandwidth upgrades.

Using Riverbed SteelFusion, SteelCentral NetExpress and SteelHead, BOBST centralized backups and consolidated branch servers while optimizing WAN traffic. The changes delivered fast local application performance (startup for a key app fell from 30 minutes to 10 seconds), reduced network traffic (antivirus traffic dropped from ~30% to near zero), cut recovery time to about 90 minutes, avoided immediate bandwidth upgrades, and consolidated 50+ branches—making integrations and provisioning much faster and more secure.

BOBST Group

Xavier Plautard

Group IT Infrastructure Manager