Case Study: Nelson Nygaard achieves fast mobile and branch collaboration with Riverbed Steelhead Mobile

Riverbed Steelhead Mobile Accelerates Applications Everywhere for Nationwide Consulting Firm

Nelson Nygaard is a national transportation planning firm with about 80 employees across seven North American offices that frequently collaborate on large multi‑megabyte design and GIS files. With many staff traveling or working remotely and a three‑person IT team, the firm suffered poor WAN performance over T1/SonicWALL links, frustrated users who resorted to insecure local copies, and slow collaboration on 30–50 MB documents.

Nelson Nygaard deployed Riverbed SteelHead appliances in its branch offices and SteelHead Mobile to mobile users (40 deployed, with plans for full rollout), delivering LAN‑like performance everywhere. Downloads that once took up to five minutes dropped to about 40 seconds on first access and 2–3 seconds thereafter, IT management became simple, data remained centralized and secure, and employees could collaborate productively from the road, home, or office.

Nelson Nygaard

Raj Singh

CIO and Partner