Riverbed's better technology gives a big boost to LNJ Bhilwara Group's business

What does LNJ Bhilwara Group do?

LNJ Bhilwara Group is a versatile, multi-product & services conglomerate and one of India’s top business houses.

Headquartered in Delhi, LNJ Bhilwara Group has approximately 25,000 professionals working in 11 locations across the country. Since its inception as a textile mill in 1960, the group has diversified into a conglomerate of multiple products and services focusing mainly on textiles, graphite and power.

What were the problems that you have been facing in your organization before the solution was implemented?

As part of company’s long-term IT strategy, we wanted to move a majority of the group’s applications and data from a large number of local facilities to the cloud. To expedite the process, the IT team removed servers from the company’s textile manufacturing facilities, and centralized data and applications in a datacenter in Noida (near Delhi).However, centralization slowed application performance to unacceptable levels. For example, after centralization, even something as simple as the delivery of an email could take 30 minutes. Slow application response had a negative impact on every element of the textile business – from ordering to production to delivery.

Keeping accurate track of inventory, for instance, became nearly impossible, making it difficult to meet customers’ expectations for timely deliveries. Slow application performance also delayed response to climate conditions such as monsoons, which affect the availability of cotton. When necessary for continuity of production, Bhilwara can import cotton from other countries. But changing course on the fly was difficult when the IT infrastructure couldn’t keep pace.

On the financial side, poor application performance slowed the preparation of monthly account balances. Teams of accountants had to work around the clock for five days to complete them. Credit control was also affected because there was no real-time way for the different manufacturing facilities to determine the credit status of a customer.

Why and how did you decide on Riverbed?

To tackle the issue, we decided to look into wide-area network (WAN) optimization as a way to improve the performance of the centralized applications. Riverbed’s SteelHead was selected after a detailed evaluation, especially due to company’s leadership and expertise in the area of WAN optimization. 

Actually, SteelHead had an advantage of advanced features such as inbound and outbound quality of service (QoS) and path selection, to optimize the use of hybrid networks. SteelHead’s inbound QoS, for example, gives the manufacturing sites control over incoming network traffic so that the business-critical applications are guaranteed priority and stable bandwidth. Other factors were the quality of Riverbed’s support and a faster ROI.

What is the solution that has actually helped you in getting rid of the problems?

Riverbed SteelHead CX appliances were deployed in datacenter and ten manufacturing facilities across the country. Riverbed also organized training sessions that included people from all of the regions where the group has manufacturing facilities. That way, local teams learned how to manage their own appliances.

Can you please share the benefits that you had?

The impact of SteelHead on the business has been dramatic and application performance improved dramatically. The textile production cycle (order to delivery), has progressed significantly – a very important outcome for Bhilwara, which prides itself on the timeliness of its deliveries. Inventory management has improved to the point that the marketing department can see immediately how much material is in stock at any given time and make a firm commitment to customers about delivery dates. The amount of time required for preparing monthly account balances dropped from five days to less than two. Real-time credit checking eliminated the problem of having customers get different credit terms from different facilities.

File transfers are now 10 times faster, emails are seven to 10 times faster, and business applications run three times faster than they did before SteelHead deployment.

Riverbed has established a strong foundation for a future cloud-first approach. Our IT department can now focus on strategic development in areas like assessment and deployment of new technologies to ensure high performance and success.