Case Study: Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia achieves up to 70% bandwidth savings and faster cloud-enabled healthcare delivery with Riverbed

Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia - Customer Case Study

The Royal Flying Doctor Service (Queensland Section) is an aeromedical organization delivering primary and emergency healthcare to remote communities across Queensland, operating 19 aircraft and supporting roughly 400 staff. As RFDS moved more mission‑critical services to the cloud, its aging network struggled with bandwidth‑heavy apps, frequent outages, poor application performance and limited visibility—issues that threatened patient care and overwhelmed a small IT team.

Working with Riverbed (and partner Zero1), RFDS deployed SteelHead (including SteelHead SaaS/CX) and SteelCentral NetExpress to accelerate cloud and SaaS apps and gain end‑to‑end network visibility. The solution cut network traffic by up to 60–70%, eliminated costly bandwidth upgrades, sharply reduced user complaints, and established a confident foundation for cloud migration—freeing the three‑person IT team to focus on higher‑value work and improving delivery of life‑saving services.

Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia

Dean Coulter

ICT Infrastructure Manager