Riverbed Technology today announced that Attune Hearing, Australia's largest independent audiology service provider, has deployed a cloud networking solution from Riverbed across more than 44 clinics nationwide, to enable greater business agility, and the flexibility and visibility it needs to deliver new, dynamic experiences for customers and staff, and remain competitive amidst major industry disruption. The cloud networking solution combines SD-WAN (software-defined wide area networking) solution Riverbed SteelConnect with industry-leading WAN optimization Riverbed SteelHead, in a single appliance. The roll-out is being managed by Telstra, as part of a wider investment in modernizing Attune's infrastructure across the country.

Attune Hearing offers a wide range of audiological services from diagnostic hearing tests for adults and children to hearing aid fitting and rehabilitation, and operates primarily on referrals from healthcare providers. The company has faced increased competition in recent years as the audiology industry undergoes a major disruption, with several large retailers entering the market. Customer experience has become the primary battleground.

"We had been using SteelHead to improve the performance of apps across our network for years, and during that time our IT environment has evolved significantly as we've stretched to innovate and deliver richer experiences for our customers and staff," said Jamie Delacey, Head of ICT, Attune Hearing. "We're adding new services, applications and locations all the time - and it was placing a strain on our existing network. We needed a new, modern approach that would help us continue to optimize the new traffic we were creating, but at the same time, give us greater control and the ability to flex and adapt our network to future needs."

With an IT team of just three, Attune manages 44 clinics as far north as Townsville, south of the Mornington peninsula, west of Perth and all down the eastern seaboard. Bringing new services, apps and sites online required a significant amount of time, travel and cost. Getting a single service online could take up to four months.

An upgrade to SteelHead SD, combined with SteelConnect, gives Attune Hearing a powerful single-device solution that drastically simplifies networking, reduces the time it takes to spin up new apps, services and locations, and accelerates the slew of new traffic crossing their hybrid environment into the cloud. Additionally, SteelCentral Insights for SteelConnect gives Attune Hearing improved visibility across the network, delivering real-time insight into how their IT environment is performing, which they can act on.

"All we need is an internet connection and a new site is up and running on the network," said Delacey. "At the same time, the visibility we are getting has been a game-changer. From our head office in Brisbane for example, we are able to understand performance, diagnose and resolve issues and improve service levels for our staff and customers without needing to fly around the country." With SteelConnect, the Attune IT team is also able to make network or application policy changes centrally with just a few clicks - versus needing to make manual CLI code changes - enabling the company to be much more agile to the needs of the business and for customers.

A modern approach to networking delivered by the Riverbed solution will serve as a foundation for Attune Hearing's digital transformation journey, and power improved experiences for its customers and staff. For example, over the next 18 months, the company plans to move to a paperless environment, whereby customers will have a single digital sign-on and seamless experience, whether they are connecting with Attune Hearing from in-home or in-clinic with cloud-based applications.

"By offering new digital services to customers, we're also replacing existing cumbersome manual processes for our staff. Not only does this boost productivity and morale, it means our customers are getting the best from our employees," said Delacey. "The competition is not going away anytime soon, but we're confident that with Riverbed and Telstra, we have the right technology to deliver the agility we need to continue to lead the nation in audiology."

Riverbed Delivers Solutions for Cloud and Digital World

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. Riverbed's integrated platform delivers the agility, visibility, and performance businesses need to be successful in a cloud and digital world. By leveraging Riverbed's platform, organizations can deliver apps, data, and services from any public, private, or hybrid cloud across any network to any end-point.

Riverbed SteelHead is the industry's #1 optimization solution for accelerated delivery and peak performance of applications across the software-defined WAN. Riverbed SteelConnect is a revolutionary application-defined SD-WAN solution that provides an intelligent and simplified approach to designing, deploying and managing distributed networks, and integrates with SteelHead WAN Optimization, SteelCentral for visibility and Riverbed Xirrus cloud-based Wi-Fi. Riverbed SteelCentral product family is a performance management and control suite that combines user experience, application, and network performance management to provide the visibility needed to diagnose and cure issues before end users notice a problem, call the help desk, or jump to another web site out of frustration. Riverbed SteelFusion enables a software-defined edge by bringing together best-of-breed virtualization, intelligent storage caching, and industry-leading WAN optimization into a single hyper-converged infrastructure solution that meets both the needs of the enterprise as well as the needs of branch employees for high-performing applications that simply work so they can do their jobs.