Case Study: Colas Ltd achieves up to 8× faster app access and £110,000 savings with Riverbed SteelHead™ appliances

Riverbed Improves Collaboration by Accelerating Centralised Applications for Leading Construction Firm

Colas Ltd, the UK arm of global road-construction group Colas SA, employs over 1,200 people and relies on fast access to centralized systems for project collaboration. Persistent slowness when using Microsoft Office, Coda Financials and the corporate intranet was hindering knowledge sharing and preventing rollout of new centralized applications like SharePoint and CRM, prompting the IT team to seek a scalable infrastructure fix.

Colas deployed 13 Riverbed SteelHead™ appliances across its MPLS network in a phased, two-month rollout to optimize WAN traffic. The appliances delivered up to 8x faster access to centralized files, cut file transfers from eight minutes to under one, reduced backups from four–five hours to one hour, lowered bandwidth use by 65–75% and are expected to save about £110,000 by deferring bandwidth upgrades.

Colas Ltd

Tony Delaney

IT Manager