Network executives faced with the challenge of stretching IT budgets while still improving application performance are continuing to try out WAN optimization tools.

Architectural design firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) recently deployed Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances across its organization to improve employee collaboration and enhance its disaster recovery solution. File download speeds have been accelerated by up to 80%, and employees located in RSHP’s London, Barcelona, Madrid and Tokyo offices -- or in the firm’s global project offices -- can work with files and Web applications over the WAN regardless of where they are located, explains Seamus Conway, network manager for RSHP.

In addition, RSHP has been able to centralize its disaster recovery solution, which is synchronizing up to 50GB of data each day between its headquarters and a third-party site, without expanding its existing Internet link. Data is mirrored to a secondary site using NetApp SnapMirror via an optimized connection between Steelhead appliances.

“We have configured the DR traffic to use only 2Mbps of the total bandwidth available,” Conway said in a statement. “Without Riverbed, our users would still be struggling to access files and we would have needed a 100Mbps bandwidth link for the DR site. We would have incurred a significant cost."

“The bandwidth and throughput usage are controlled via Riverbed quality of service (QoS), which we can increase or decrease at will,” Conway added. “Our project offices are now able to connect back to HQ from any location and access all file and network data at LAN speeds."

Looking ahead, RSHP is evaluating the Riverbed Services Platform (RSP), which is designed to let users run up to five additional services and applications virtually in a protected partition on a Steelhead appliance. The architecture firm is interested in providing domain controllers, DHCP, DNS, and print and file services to its project offices, and RSP would allow it to consolidate those services on the Steelhead devices rather than have to deploy separate servers for each service in its branch offices.

Riverbed, meanwhile, just announced a new virtual version of its mobile WAN optimization controller that makes it less expensive for small businesses to optimize traffic between individual machines and corporate offices. My colleague Tim Greene wrote about the new Steelhead Mobile Controller Virtual Edition, which runs on a Riverbed Steelhead WAN optimization appliance.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.