Case Study: Carilion Clinic achieves nearly $1M/year in bandwidth savings and faster patient care with Riverbed SteelHead WAN optimization

SteelHead saves non-profit health care service million per year in network costs to spend on patient care

Carilion Clinic, a non-profit health system of seven hospitals serving nearly one million patients in southwest Virginia, relied on centralized PACS imaging and EPIC EMR systems hosted in primary and secondary data centers. Facing high WAN circuit costs (OC3 links costing about $12,000/month at some sites), slow daily data replication windows, and limited bandwidth at rural locations (often only 10 Mbps), the IT team needed to cut network expenses while maintaining or improving application performance for clinicians.

Carilion deployed Riverbed SteelHead WAN optimization after a proof-of-concept showed dramatic gains, achieving roughly 10–15× throughput for replication and cutting a ~24-hour replication job to 3–4 hours. By moving many sites from OC3 to DS3 circuits and rolling out SteelHead appliances to remote locations, the clinic realized nearly $1 million in annual bandwidth savings, averaged about 40% data reduction and a 2× capacity increase, and improved access to EPIC and PACS—speeding care delivery for patients.

Carilion Clinic

Mike Smith

Director of Technical Services