TMCnet News

Riverbed SteelHead Helps JLL Lead Commercial Real Estate Industry Innovation with Superior Application Performance
[August 12, 2015]

Riverbed SteelHead Helps JLL Lead Commercial Real Estate Industry Innovation with Superior Application Performance


Riverbed (News - Alert) Technology, the leader in application performance infrastructure, today announced that leading global commercial real estate company, JLL, is using Riverbed® SteelHead™ as the foundation for its next-generation, hybrid network. An InformationWeek Elite 100 company, JLL uses leading technology to deliver value to its commercial real estate owner, investor and corporate clients in more than 80 countries. Underlying much of JLL's technology are Riverbed's SteelHead solutions. SteelHead ensures superior application performance over networks, supporting intense traffic from bandwidth-intensive applications like live video, and both cloud-based and SaaS (News - Alert) applications.

JLL-a Fortune 500 company with annual revenue of $5.4 billion-is a professional services firm that specializes in commercial real estate services and investment management.

Tweet This: See how JLL is using #Riverbed SteelHead for its next-generation, hybrid WAN and improving app performance: http://rvbd.ly/1IoNO1L

The company's IT team supports 58,000 employees across 230 corporate offices in more than 80 countries, and is tasked with ensuring rapid access to centralized, business-critical applications. It also supports the firm's industry-leading technology platforms such as RED, a comprehensive corporate data and analytics platform; 3D remote site selection tool Blackbird, smart building platform IntelliCommand?, and an award-winning suite of property marketing technology-based tools.

JLL's IT environment is constantly evolving to meet the company's needs as cost-effectively as possible while maintaining its position as a technology innovator in the commercial real estate industry. For example, its network is becoming increasingly hybrid as the company moves more applications and services to the cloud. Also, the company is in the process of replacing its MPLS network with dual high-speed Internet links at each office, to provide more bandwidth at a better price. Meanwhile JLL has adopted new practices such as video town hall meetings and internal webcasts that require large amounts of bandwidth.

As an early Riverbed customer, JLL originally deployed SteelHead appliances as a way to avoid buying bandwidth at all of its global locations, "back when bandwidth was super expensive," explained Joe Ryan, JLL chief technology officer, Americas. Even with the higher amounts of bandwidth available today, JLL continues to rely on SteelHead to ensure fast data access and superior application performance over the network. "Our professionals push our bandwidth to the limit; our clients expect rapid insights from us, and that means high performance. Even with 100 mbps connections, without the SteelHead appliances, people would be screaming about poor application performance," says Ryan.

JLL has an ever-increasing number of network connections, due to increased adoption of internet-based application use within its hybrid network. To support this increasingly tech-savvy workforce, JLL continues to invest in its Riverbed implementation, allowing the company to improve agility and efficiency and lower operational costs, all while ensuring exceptional application performance for users globally, even as the number of users expands. "Delivering business-critical apps over the Internet saves us millions without sacrificing performance. Riverbed makes it possible," says Edward Wagoner, JLL chief information officer (CIO), Americas.

JLL also uses the built-in virtual platform on SteelHead appliances to run other services, such as staging software updates. This use of Riverbed's technology has made it possible to remove file servers from branc offices, achieving significant savings in costs and time. "We've eliminated the cost of the servers as well as everything else that's associated with them from a management perspective," says Ryan. "SteelHead saves the team time because there are fewer devices to monitor, to patch, and to move when our offices move. The savings just add up."



SteelHead also helps ensure high-quality webcasts and videoconferences, allowing JLL to adopt live video town hall meetings, and support other data-intensive client platforms such as its new data and analytics platform, RED, and its 3D remote site analysis software, Blackbird. To support the video applications, SteelHead detects when multiple users tune in to a live video stream, sends only one request for the video, and then splits the stream locally to serve each individual. This is designed to ensure flawless video quality while requiring fewer resources and protecting other applications from performance problems. SteelHead video stream-splitting has enabled the JLL Americas region to remove media servers from over 90% of their offices.

Most importantly, Riverbed SteelHead technology helps keep JLL's IT innovation at the forefront of the commercial real estate industry. "When we go out and talk with others in the industry, we certainly think we're far out in front. The next-generation WAN is getting a lot of press now," Ryan says. "We view our investment in technology as an investment in our people. We're always out there looking at what's new, what's possible and making sure we're taking advantage of it. Riverbed is a part of that."


Riverbed SteelHead and the Riverbed Application Performance Platform™

The Riverbed Application Performance Platform™ gives CIOs end-to-end visibility, optimization and control across an entire enterprise. A key part of the platform, Riverbed SteelHead is the industry's #1 optimization solution for accelerated delivery of all applications across the hybrid enterprise. SteelHead provides increased visibility into application performance and end-user experience and the ability to ensure business performance SLAs through an application-aware approach to hybrid networking based on centralized business intent-based policies.

Connect with Riverbed

Connect with JLL

About Riverbed

Riverbed, at more than $1 billion in annual revenue, is the leader in Application Performance Infrastructure, delivering the most complete platform for the hybrid enterprise to ensure applications perform as expected, data is always available when needed, and performance issues can be proactively detected and resolved before impacting business performance. Riverbed enables hybrid enterprises to transform application performance into a competitive advantage by maximizing employee productivity and leveraging IT to create new forms of operational agility. Riverbed's 26,000+ customers include 97% of the Fortune 100 and 98% of the Forbes Global 100. Learn more at www.riverbed.com.

Riverbed and any Riverbed product or service name or logo used herein are trademarks of Riverbed Technology, Inc. All other trademarks used herein belong to their respective owners.

About JLL

JLL (NYSE:JLL) is a professional services and investment management firm offering specialized real estate services to clients seeking increased value by owning, occupying and investing in real estate. With annual fee revenue of $4.7 billion and gross revenue of $5.4 billion, JLL has more than 230 corporate offices, operates in 80 countries and has a global workforce of approximately 58,000. On behalf of its clients, the firm provides management and real estate outsourcing services for a property portfolio of 3.4 billion square feet, or 316 million square meters, and completed $118 billion in sales, acquisitions and finance transactions in 2014. Its investment management business, LaSalle Investment Management, has $56.0 billion of real estate assets under management. JLL is the brand name, and a registered trademark, of Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. For further information, visit www.jll.com.


[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]