Columbia Forest Products Boosts Network Application Performance With Intelligent WAN Optimization From Packeteer

Business Wire, Jan 11, 2007

Avoids WAN Bandwidth Upgrades After Deploying PacketShapers Throughout Entire North American Facilities

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- Packeteer([R]) (Nasdaq:PKTR), the global leader in WAN Application Optimization, today announced that Columbia Forest Products, North America's largest manufacturer of hardwood plywood and veneer, has deployed PacketShaper[TM] appliances at each of its 22 production facilities and sales offices to optimize the performance of its enterprise-wide network. By leveraging Packeteer's highly granular visibility tools to classify all applications running across its WAN, Columbia is now able to satisfy stringent response time performance objectives for its business-critical applications with a 99 percent success rate. With Packeteer's intelligent application delivery approach, which first assesses application traffic to determine the correct WAN optimization and/or acceleration technology, Columbia avoided a costly WAN bandwidth upgrade to its existing network infrastructure.

"The nature of our business requires locating production facilities in remote and rural areas where the cost of WAN bandwidth is extraordinarily high," commented Cliff Cayer, director, network operations at Columbia. "As we added new business-critical applications to the network, the existing Fractional T1 links were becoming congested, causing user response times to degrade significantly. The situation was particularly challenging because we maintain a fully centralized IT architecture with all applications housed in the datacenter at our Portland, Oregon headquarters."

In 2000, Columbia investigated available alternatives to increasing WAN bandwidth. At the time, Cayer determined that only Packeteer offered a viable solution. The company initially deployed PacketShaper 1500s, which solved the traffic congestion problems and averted the need to renegotiate a favorable telecommunications contract with four years remaining on its term.

As traffic continues to increase, Columbia upgraded all 20 production facilities and both sales offices with PacketShaper 2500s, and installed two model 9500s in a redundant, load-sharing configuration at the headquarters datacenter. Today the network supports over 1100 users and several additional applications, yet still continues to utilize the same low-cost Fractional T1 links with no degradation in performance.

Cayer explained the rationale behind the decision to adopt Packeteer over alternative solutions: "Routers are not the right device for traffic management because they are able to queue traffic based only on packet prioritization schemes, which are difficult to align with the business value of individual applications. In fact, there is simply no way to do what we do with PacketShapers using routers because you can't manage something you can't measure."

With full visibility into all traffic flows through Layer 7, Columbia is able to shape bandwidth dynamically in a hierarchical manner for every application running on its network. The critical applications -- enterprise resource planning, business intelligence, sales and reporting, printing, and email -- all perform within stringent response time objectives 99 percent of the time. The system is also configured to block certain prohibited traffic, such as videos and any application using a predatory protocol.

During periods when bandwidth is available, users are permitted to surf the Web, download software updates and perform other less critical tasks. "Our user community understands the need to manage network bandwidth," commented Robert Buckmaster, Columbia's lead engineer on the project. "They appreciate the enhanced performance and productivity they get in their daily routine, and respect the fact we need to throttle back or block Web surfing and other 'leisurely pursuits' during peak traffic periods. In effect, if it's not on the 'allow' list, we want to restrict that traffic when the network is busy with more important tasks."

Packeteer's intelligent monitoring and shaping tools are able to track link performance, as well as peak and average utilization by application and user, both historically and in real-time. With immediate access to meaningful and actionable information about all network traffic, Columbia's IT staff spends less time troubleshooting WAN performance problems, and more time focusing on strategic IT initiatives.

"It seems fitting that a company capable of getting the most from every tree by cutting veneer to within a fraction of an inch is able to run a billion-dollar business on Fractional T1 lines," Cayer said. "We really push the PacketShapers to their limit. The advanced levels of visibility and granularity for assessing traffic flows give us total control over bandwidth utilization. And the predictable and consistent throughput performance delivered by the PacketShapers is instrumental in meeting our demanding business objectives."

About Columbia Forest Products

Founded in 1957, Columbia Forest Products (www.columbiaforestproducts.com) is North America's largest manufacturer of hardwood plywood and hardwood veneer. The company also markets and produces engineered and solid wood flooring products. Columbia's decorative interior veneers and panels are used in high-end cabinetry, fine furniture, architectural millwork and commercial fixtures. Employee-owned and based in Portland, Oregon, Columbia employs more than 3,500 and operates facilities in locations throughout the United States, Canada and Malaysia.