Case Study: Desert Schools Federal Credit Union achieves 60-80% bandwidth reduction and faster branch application performance with Riverbed Steelhead appliances

Riverbed Steelhead Appliances Improve Bandwidth Speed for Major Federal Credit Union

Desert Schools Federal Credit Union (DSFCU), Arizona’s largest credit union with $3B in assets, 350,000+ members and 64 branch locations, needed to move from a Citrix thin‑client model to full desktop PCs to support scanners, card readers and other teller peripherals. Rapid growth made centralized IT essential, but latency and “chatty” applications over the WAN threatened performance — and upgrading circuits to 64 branches (an estimated $62K/month) was not affordable.

DSFCU deployed Riverbed Steelhead appliances in‑path across its WAN, which were quick to install and easy to manage centrally via Riverbed’s CMC. The appliances delivered 60–80% bandwidth reduction, improved application performance and remote manageability, deferred costly circuit upgrades, preserved the consolidation strategy, and provided the capacity to roll out desktops and support future replication and virtualization initiatives.

Desert Schools Federal Credit Union

Chris Kearney

AVP of Information Technology