Case Study: Rohm and Haas achieves LAN-like global application performance with Riverbed Steelhead appliances

Riverbed Steelhead Appliances Accelerate Applications Around the Globe for Fortune 500 Firm

Rohm and Haas, a global specialty-chemicals manufacturer with more than 200 offices and two centralized data centers, was struggling with WAN latency that made critical applications—especially imaging, CIFS file access and ERP—slow or unusable for remote users (latency reached ~300 ms in locations like Shanghai). Although bandwidth was sufficient, “chatty” protocols and centralized IT services meant remote employees could not get responsive application performance.

The company deployed Riverbed SteelHead appliances in remote sites to optimize WAN traffic; the devices were easy to install and interoperated with existing Cisco infrastructure. Results included LAN-like performance for ERP and imaging, dramatic CIFS acceleration, WAN backups cut from hours to about 15–20 minutes, elimination of many remote file servers (saving more than the solution cost), deferred bandwidth upgrades, and a rapid payback.

Rohm and Haas

John Yeaton

Network Engineer