About our client, Queensland Cotton
Queensland Cotton (a wholly owned subsidiary of Olam International Limited) is a major supplier of premium cotton to the world's textile markets. Their success has come from quality products, a range of services and valued relationships with
suppliers, growers and cotton spinners. With a head office in Brisbane, the Australian business has cotton processing plants, known as ‘gins’, throughout rural Queensland and New South Wales.
Towards the end of 2008, Queensland Cotton approached Applicable to assist them with the implementation of a Riverbed solution, with the aim of delivering clear performance benefits and cost savings to their business.
The remote issue
Due to the remote nature of their locations, some of Queensland Cotton’s sites have limited network connectivity. It means users become more and more frustrated by slow systems and poor performance over the wide area network when trying to access the Intranet, centralized data, browse online and use core applications such as SAP and messaging systems from head office. The result was lower productivity and dissatisfied IT Users.
At one of their primary cotton processing plants in Dalby, in rural Queensland, connectivity was particularly poor and affecting productivity. Their WAN connectivity was upgraded to 3G wireless, which improved things a little. However, there was no
cost-effective way to increase bandwidth, and still a steady stream of complaints from end users continued.
Queensland Cotton then decided to look for a WAN optimization and application acceleration solution. “We had heard of the Riverbed solution through various forums and web discussions, and a business partner of ours had also mentioned it,” explains
“The option of the free trial was crucial – it enabled
the IT team here to get approval for the project as risk was minimized.
The Riverbed solution has given us two things: real cost benefits and
increased productivity at this remote site.”
NIGEL KLEINSCHMIDT Queensland Cotton
Information Services Manager
Nigel Kleinschmidt, Information Services Manager at Queensland Cotton. “Applicable had previously made contact with us and let us know that they were a Riverbed partner. So when we decided to go down this route some time later, we got in touch and chose Applicable as our preferred business partner for the project.”
Linking with the Riverbed solution
As a proven IT professional services organization and managed services provider, Applicable has long-standing associations with a range of vendors.
We are an approved partner of Riverbed and deliver a range of services around the Steelhead family of products. Not only have we invested in our technical teams to achieve this status, but we continue to stay up-to-date with the very latest training, products and solutions.
Riverbed offers a best of breed solution designed to benefit any organisation that has WAN links connecting their sites, and is suffering from congestion and latency issues. Their Steelhead products dramatically speed up network and application
performance and data transfer rates, overcoming bandwidth problems and geographical limitations to deliver LAN-like results.
Agreeing the way forward - without the risk or upfront costs
Queensland Cotton was working to a strict budget, so it was necessary for us to liaise closely with Riverbed on an appropriate solution. Once the solution and deal had been agreed, the process took less than three weeks for the Steelhead products to be up and running and for Queensland Cotton to start reaping the benefits.
We implemented a free 30 day trial of the Riverbed Steelhead technology. This allowed our client to fully asses the business benefits without risk or money upfront; before deciding to progress with the solution (no other vendor in this space does this).
Steelhead units were installed: one at the client’s head office in Brisbane and the other in Dalby. “The process was very straightforward,” explains Charles Anderson, Senior Network/Desktop Administrator and the Project Champion. “The
right technical support people were always there when we needed them - responsive and helpful throughout. We just needed to give the Steelheads a network address and then plug them in. It was as simple as that.”
Transforming the user experience
Users at the Dalby site are now experiencing the same level of network and application performance as if they were directly connected to the local area network at head office. Data moves faster: file transfers that once took hours now take minutes – or even seconds. Subsequently, productivity has been vastly improved
and greater collaboration made possible.
Users can also do things that just weren’t possible before, such as access certain online forms available through Queensland Cotton’s Intranet. Previously, these forms took so long to download that users gave up, or the application simply timed out. Now the forms are there instantly.
One of the team at the Dalby site describes the testing they carried out:
“First we tested with Riverbed on. SAP, Email, Word etc all opened pretty well instantly and we were able to navigate through all of them with ease.The difference between Riverbed on an off was just astounding.”
Another user at Dalby continues:
“When Riverbed was off, Word, Excel and other applications were a
nightmare - we want Riverbed!”
Nigel Kleinschmidt, Information Services Manager, sums up:
“This wireless technology allowed us to achieve a cost-effective way forward, improving performance and making applications 20-30 times faster. Users are happy and morale is up – and you can’t put a value on that.”
Widespread savings and increased productivity
Queensland Cotton enjoys a cost benefit compared with the expense of increasing bandwidth time and time again, or having to invest in local servers at this remote site. As well as delivering real value, the Riverbed solution is being considered to play a major part in their strategy to centralize all core IT services and extend
the solution across a number of other sites, producing further costs savings and increasing productivity.
“The user experience has been transformed. We had a day of testing
when we really worked the system with the Steelhead switched on. Then it was turned off to compare performance. After just 15 minutes the team couldn’t bear it anymore. The team in Dalby is thrilled with the results from Riverbed.”
CHARLES ANDERSON Queensland Cotton
Senior Network/Desktop Administrator
and Riverbed Project Champion