Riverbed Helps Interplex Successfully Use Robotics at Manufacturing Plants Globally

SINGAPORE
– November
3, 2016 –
Riverbed Technology, the application performance company, today announced that
Interplex Holdings Pte. Ltd (“Interplex”), a leading global precision
engineering and manufacturing company headquartered in Singapore, is using
Riverbed solutions to modernize its infrastructure to improve application performance,
network visibility, and business agility.

Interplex,
with 40 manufacturing plants located in 13 countries spanning Europe,
Asia/Pacific and the United States, provides advanced application development
and manufacturing solutions for complex precision mechanical and
electro-mechanical components and assemblies.

Over the
last few years, the company has made strategic investments in IT. A key move
was the introduction of robotics to the manufacturing floor, which boosted
operational efficiency and productivity, resulting in strong growth for the company
in an otherwise slowing sector.

Despite
the gains made through automation, the increasing data traffic from rapid
innovation and the introduction of new apps, services and connected devices
began to take a toll on the network, degrading application performance and
eroding productivity and cost-efficiency. Over time, the speed of applications
delivered from the Singapore data center over the network came to a crawl,
frustrating users, particularly at plants in rural areas with unstable Internet
service, and making it nearly impossible to deploy new apps and services to
sites efficiently. These projects also increased the complexity of the network.
With limited visibility into traffic patterns, application-level utilization,
and device-level performance, a lot of time was wasted on finger-pointing
amongst the infrastructure and apps teams as they struggled to identify and fix
performance issues.

“The
implementation of robotics for manufacturing automation has been huge for us in
terms of productivity and cost-savings, but it has created more IT complexity,”
said Ken Khoo, Management Information Systems Manager, responsible for Global
Infrastructure at Interplex Holdings. “All production lines on which the
robotics sit connect to the ERP system. It knows how much has been manufactured
and how much has spoiled – it’s amazing – but it’s also created a lot more
chatter over the network.”

Interplex’s
first priority was to stop bleeding bandwidth, but its long-term focus was on
finding a solution that could scale to the complex needs of the business over
time. The company selected Riverbed solutions because of their ability to
deliver a modern network and application performance infrastructure with
integrated end-to-end visibility that would save costs, meet immediate
regulatory compliance needs, and pave the way for more seamless digital
transformation. Riverbed was also uniquely positioned to provide a skilled
support team that matched the company’s global footprint.

Interplex
implemented a solution that combined Riverbed SteelHead, the industry’s #1 WAN
optimization solution, across 13 sites and Riverbed SteelCentral network and
application performance management for end-to-end visibility. Riverbed
Professional Services managed the implementation and provides support across
global sites.

Riverbed
SteelHead reduced the bandwidth consumed by more than 50% and significantly
simplified management to deliver ROI within just two weeks. Employees also
noticed huge improvements in application performance of inventory tracking, a
process done through a barcode scanner that feeds data into the company’s ERP
system. SteelHead has helped reduced scanning time by 70%, from 10 seconds to 3
seconds. “The user experience was just totally different after the
implementation. It’s as if the apps were being run locally,” said Khoo.

Leveraging
network telemetry and application performance data, SteelCentral provides
Interplex with real-time device status, link-level monitoring, uptime
information and alerts as well as visibility into traffic patterns like application-level
utilization and top talkers. This has been particularly helpful in managing IT
at remote sites with limited local IT support. Khoo credits SteelCentral with
allowing his team to pinpoint issues immediately, at the code level in some
cases, cutting resolution time instantly. “In a matter of minutes, SteelCentral
identified an application performance problem in the U.S. that had persisted
for nearly a month. We had assumed that the application was running poorly
because it was routing through Singapore, so we were trying to solve a latency
issue. It turns out the app hadn’t been properly scrutinized for performance,”
says Khoo. “Before, the infrastructure and app teams played the blame game when
something went wrong. With SteelCentral, there’s no need.”

With a
strong backbone of application and network performance infrastructure in place,
Interplex has its eye on expanding automation to customer and vendor-facing
processes, and plans to move a greater share of its applications and services
to the cloud.

“Riverbed
solutions have allowed us to drive more applications out to our users more
quickly, and helped us drive IT into the business. I’m proud to say we’re a
tech-driven organization,” said Khoo. “At the end of the day, it’s all about
cost. That dollar we save in IT-generated efficiencies translates into savings
we can pass on to our customers indirectly, and dollars we can invest back into
the business towards future growth, development and innovation.”

Riverbed is delivering solutions to help companies
transition from legacy hardware to a new software-defined and cloud-centric
approach to networking, and improve end user experience, allowing enterprises’
digital transformation initiatives to reach their full potential. The Riverbed
Application Performance Platform™ delivers
the agility, visibility, and performance businesses need to be successful in a
cloud and digital world. By leveraging the Platform, organizations can
deliver apps, data, and services from any public, private, or hybrid cloud
across any network to any end-point. When used
together, Riverbed
SteelHead and Riverbed
SteelCentral deliver a
complete application visibility and optimization solution for the hybrid
enterprise. Together, they enable real-time application, network and end-user
experience visibility, deep application intelligence to ensure critical
applications get Quality of Service (QoS) levels that are aligned with business
objectives and application acceleration for all apps, to users anywhere to
enhance end-user experience and increase productivity levels, optimize
resources and reduce TCO.