Teneo tackles poor application performance and realises server centralisation benefits for Otsuka

Published on: 25 February 2009

Otsuka Pharmaceutical Europe is part of Otsuka Pharmaceutical Group which researches and develops new products in its specialist areas of cardiovascular, gastro-intestinal and central nervous system disorders. The business consists of 106 companies employing 33,000 people across 18 countries.

Otsuka’s European head office at Uxbridge is also the location for its main European data centre server which serves 300 employees working in the UK and across five other European countries. A 10Mbps link serves the Uxbridge centre with other sites relying on 4Mbs leased line links. Most of the European sites are server-less, accessing head office via virtual private network (VPN) tunnels.

Ali Khan, Otsuka’s IT manager for Europe had recently been recruited, and from day one he faced user complaints about poor application performance, especially with applications such as Microsoft Dynamics NAV, with 25-30MB NAV JET report data files taking as long as 15 minutes to move across the network. Overall, there was huge dissatisfaction from users reliant on these key applications, especially in synchronising files - some frustrated personnel had disabled synchronisation functions risking data loss.

Khan was under pressure to abandon the server consolidation, but then he had previous experience working at a pharmaceutical company which had implemented a Wide Area Network (WAN) optimisation strategy and called in Teneo to explore this for Otsuka. Teneo suggested that in theory Otsuka’s strategy of consolidating servers was sound, but in practice it was being let down through network latency over the WAN. Teneo was convinced that WAN optimisation was the route forward.

Khan worked with Teneo, who suggested that using Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances would provide an effective solution and help support Otsuka’s consolidation strategy. As a trial, Teneo installed Steelheads at Otsuka’s offices in Uxbridge and Paris. Almost immediately, Microsoft NAV JET reports which previously took several minutes to a quarter of an hour to download now took about 15 seconds. Once the trial was deemed a success, Teneo rolled out Riverbed Steelheads to all Otsuka Europe offices.

Ali Khan, IT Manager – Europe, Otsuka, commented:
“There are cost savings as well as user and performance benefits from Teneo’s Riverbed solution. We have saved bandwidth costs, but the solution has also realised the consolidation benefits we were looking for, allowing us to virtualise servers and back-up over our WAN. Without it, we would have had to invest heavily to install and support servers at each of our European offices.”

James Hall, marketing director, Teneo, responded:
“Otsuka are similar to many other organisations who have attempted to consolidate and centralise their servers but are let down by poor application performance due to high WAN latency. Solutions such as WAN optimisation are key to successful consolidation and virtualisation projects – we would advise any IT manager or director to explore the possibilities that WAN optimisation brings.”