Product category:
Manufacturing communication infrastructure
News Release from: Riverbed Technology | Subject: Steelhead 1010
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 26 September 2006
Vicon Utilise Riverbed
Vicon Utilise Riverbed to Improve International Communications
Vicon - the combined businesses of Vicon Motion Systems and Peak Performance - is part of OMG plc, a public company trading on the London Stock Exchange Headquartered in Oxford, UK, the business has subsidiaries in Lake Forest California, Los Angeles and Denver
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 16 May 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
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Vicon has 20 years experience in capturing and analysing movement to be utilised in life sciences, animation and engineering.
Whether it's to understand the gait cycle of a child, the swimming action of an Olympic athlete, or to capture the movement of a lobster - Vicon has a solution.
Vicon solutions are used to capture 1000s of moves for an all new video game, to educate the next generation of animators in the possibilities of motion capture, to create a crowd scene by capturing just one or two actors, to simulate a new work environment, to visualise a new engineering design, or to understand the ergonomics of a change to an existing design.
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Vicon was established in Oxford, UK in 1984 as a management buy-out from the Oxford Instruments Group by the current Deputy Chairman, Julian Morris with some founding employees and private investors.
The privately owned company flourished and grew from organically generated profits, establishing itself as a world leader in its core business of motion capture and analysis.
Peak Performance Technologies was established in colorado, USA in 1984 with a goal of producing a computer and video-based biomechanical analysis tool to help athletes improve their performance in preparation for Olympic and world competition.
As the business continued to grow, access speed between sites had become slow each time a subsidiary needed to download a latest version of software from the Oxford HQ where the primary file servers are located.
The length of time this was taking and the disruption to workflow that it caused was unacceptable to the business.
Other than downloading software being slow, a further major pain point for remote sites has been file browsing.
Pulling files over the VPN WAN link was increasingly frustrating, and disrupted work flow considerably.
Vicon first evaluated the option of increasing the size of the dedicated line to their Lake Forest office.
The cost to install the required 1.5mbps was quoted at GBP1679, with an additional cost of GBP2275 per month, totalling GBP28,950 for the first year.
This represented a significant cost increase and so Vicon looked to other options.
Vicon evaluated several solutions other than Riverbed, including offerings from Expand Systems, and an alternative approach with Double Take.
A Double Take implementation would have required a large hardware investment in the Lake Forest office so a mirror of the UK files could be stored and managed, but even with that investment further subsidiary additions would prove costly and difficult.
The expected cost was GBP1500 per server, with at least 4 servers required to get started.
The Expand Systems solution, based on a caching system, didn't deliver the performance results that they required and was well out-performed by Riverbed.
After investigating various solutions and completing the necessary due diligence, Vicon found the perfect solution in Riverbed.
The initial implementation comprises two Riverbed Steelhead 1010 Appliances - one in Oxford, UK and one in the Lake Forest office.
This initial installation was intended as a test run, but was proven to be so successful that Vicon took the decision to roll out the solution across the other subsidiaries.
The Denver office will be the next to benefit from the Riverbed solution, with installation planned for the summer.
OMG's preferred reseller and IT Consultancy partner is Foundation IT.
Carl Salmon, Group IT Manager of Vicon, has chosen to work with Foundation IT for the past three years for the impartiality of their advice and their knowledge base.
Carl stated "Foundation IT understood our business needs and listened when we had issues to solve or improvements to make".
OMG originally started using Foundation IT when they experienced a major Microsoft Exchange problem, and Foundation IT were able to give them a short term and long term resolution.
Installation of the Riverbed solution was simple and fast, "The installation was extremely easy, there is no dedicated IT team in Lake Forest, but one of our Support Engineers installed Riverbed in a matter of minutes".
Riverbed's distributor, Zycko, oversaw the entire Vicon project.
David Galton-Fenzi, Zycko Group Sales Director commented: "More and more customers are realising the benefits of Riverbed".
"It delivers rapid return on investment and increased business efficiency over multi-sites".
Vicon realised the benefits of the Riverbed solution immediately, they have included:.
* Significant cost savings compared to leased lines - ROI is expected in 6 months or less * A 53% total data reduction - with periods of over 90% reduction.
* Speeded up working processes - the team in Lake Forest has exclaimed the solution to be "Sweet and Awesome" - not technical or commercial terminology but an unmistakable sign of a satisfied user.
* Enhanced support to customers - "through faster turnaround times, we can reduce our schedule and therefore speed up theirs".
* Improvement of morale - there are no longer the frustrations for Vicon subsidiary offices of slow access to business documents.
"Riverbed is a fantastic product, it does exactly what it promises and returns value immediately".
"It is hard now to imagine how we coped with the speed of access over our WAN before we implemented the Steelhead Appliances".
"It's no longer a concern and we can focus on doing business, not waiting for files to download".
Carl Salmon, Group IT Manager, Vicon.
David Galton-Fenzi, added: "We count Riverbed as an important part of our solution portfolio".
"This Vicon deal is an illustration of yet another Riverbed success story".
"As our companies go from strength to strength, we look forward to a long and fruitful partnership with Riverbed".
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