Derbyshire Fire & Rescue Service
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Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service (DFRS) serves 15 towns with a population of 956,560, including the cities of Derby and Chesterfield.
DFRS has 950 employees based in a number of sites including the HQ, 3 offices, 9 whole time fire stations, 3 day staffed fire stations and 19 retained fire stations.
DFRS’ network architecture consists of a BT MetroVPN 34Mbit to the central site, a 2Mbit leased line to whole time and day staffed stations and a 2Mbit ADSL to retained fire stations. It uses a managed MPLS BT network using Cisco Routers.
In addition to a corporate internet, DFRS also uses email, MS Office, MS SharePoint 2007, MIS, web based GIS, EIS (fire safety application) and MS Dynamics.
The Challenge: Maximize IT efficiency by increasing speed and reducing the effects of latency with minimal support overhead
During a centralization project, DFRS was faced with the challenge of slow application performance and frustrated users. Pete Garyga, ICT Projects Officer, DFRS knew something had to be done.
“We were facing 3 challenges; bandwidth, speed, and latency. Whatever the size of your link it is never big enough for end users. DFRS was going through a centralization process using the Microsoft SharePoint server programme and we were worried about speed issues when transferring servers.”
SharePoint allows users from remote office locations to share documents and information in a collaborative environment. Although it provides a suite of team productivity tools, it doesn’t overcome the limitations that congested pipes and long distances impose on overall application performance. To alleviate slow file operations and screen refreshes, many IT managers have turned to costly bandwidth upgrade projects only to learn that bandwidth alone cannot solve the problem of network latency.
“End users were already frustrated with slow application performance. We were planning on launching a centralization project using SharePoint and so needed to improve the speed of opening files. We needed to generally speed up the user experience with little or no support overhead.” Remarked Pete
DFRS started investigating alternative solutions including upgraded links, Cisco’s Velocity solution and Riverbed Steelhead appliances. Commenting on potential bandwidth increases, Pete noted:
“Increasing bandwidth was a costly solution that didn’t reduce latency. An 8MBit MetroVPN link was £24,000 installation plus £19,800 annual rental - considerably more than a Steelhead appliance. We therefore decided to go ahead and trial the Steelhead appliances with Teneo.“
Trial of Riverbed Steelhead appliances across 5 DFRS sites
A trial was set up in July 2007 between the Headquarters, 2 area offices, a whole time station and a day staffed station. Pete recalls the trial.
“Implementation of the trial was easy. Teneo configured all the boxes, and supplied an engineer for a day. The results were immediate. We experienced a 3.7x average increase in bandwidth over a 14 day period and no support issues were raised during the trial. We therefore recommended purchasing appliances for each site to the Strategic Leadership Team. This was agreed and they then funded the purchase.”
The Solution: Roll out Riverbed Steelhead Appliances to the whole of DFRS
“After exhaustive research it was apparent the Riverbed solution was cutting edge and miles ahead of the competition. The trial proved its ability to increase speed and reduce the effects of latency. It produced excellent capacity savings and reduced the need for costly bandwidth upgrades. It was an easy decision.”
“As a public sector organization with limited funds we have a continuing obligation to maximize technology utilization while minimizing expenditure. Riverbed Steelheads more than proved their ability to do this.”
Riverbed Steelhead appliances significantly optimize SharePoint Services to deliver LAN-like performance to all sites by utilizing the Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS), which simultaneously addresses bandwidth constraints and the combined effects of latency and protocol inefficiencies. RiOS uses fine-grain data reduction as well as compression to perform Data Streamlining, typically reducing bandwidth utilization by 60 to 95%.
Transport and Application Streamlining minimize protocol chattiness, eliminating 65 to 98% of packet round trips across the WAN. RiOS also utilizes specialized Application Streamlining for HTTP, SharePoint’s underlying protocol, which enables dramatic performance improvements for team productivity using a centralized instance of SharePoint Services.
The solution was rolled out to all DFRS sites consisting of a Central Management Console (CMC) and 33 Steelheads appliances of various sizes.
Why we chose Teneo as our Riverbed Reseller
Riverbed has a network of resellers and deciding which to choose can be a daunting task. Pete noted the reasons why DFRS decided on Teneo as their Riverbed preferred partner.
“The fact that Teneo is Riverbed’s reseller of the year impressed us. The price was better than their competitors and we knew from past experience of Teneo (for another product) that they were a fantastic company. Although we received pricing from other resellers, in the end we wanted to do business with a partner that offered a decent price and was a company we knew and trusted.”
Teneo was the first Riverbed reseller in the UK and the two companies have a long history of working together. Teneo was recently awarded Northern European Reseller of the Year for the second consecutive year.
“Teneo has served us well on past projects and did so again this time. We procured the solution using the OGC Buying Solutions Catalyst framework. Teneo has been extremely helpful and come highly recommended.”
The Benefits: Happy and more productive users plus efficient and cost effective IT
The Riverbed solution met DFRS’ original objective of increased speed and it has reduced the need for expensive bandwidth upgrades.
The improvement in speed has been fantastic for example a 50MB video file that would have taken 3 minutes to copy without the Riverbed solution, now copies in less than 2 seconds. The intranet is almost as responsive at remote sites as it is at HQ. “
“Averaged across all sites we have a total data reduction of 65% across our links and a capacity increase of 2.9x.” Added Pete
DFRS have seen fantastic results. IT staff no longer get calls about slow performance and the Riverbed solution has allowed everyone to do their jobs more efficiently and users to be less frustrated.
Although DFRS haven’t looked directly at the ROI, the savings in bandwidth plus the dramatic increase in employee productivity has produced a cost payback in terms of liberating time. IT efficiency has allowed DRFS to offer a quality service with happy and motivated staff.
Pete concluded, “Our user base is more content and can now receive a faster experience using our systems allowing us to gain in productivity, and quality of service.”
Results:
The table below shows results from the CMC showing an overall traffic summary.
The diagram below shows results taken from the CMC which demonstrated a 94% peak data reduction and 65% overall data reduction during the previous month.
