Riverbed Technology, the IT infrastructure performance company for networks, applications and storage, announced today that architecture, engineering and construction firms utilizing Autodesk’s AutoCAD 2010 software will experience the same performance benefits that Riverbed customers using AutoCAD have seen for years. Based on results of tests performed by Riverbed and Autodesk, Riverbed WAN optimization solutions can accelerate AutoCAD 2010 by up to 100 times – while typically cutting WAN bandwidth consumption by 50% to 90%. By dramatically accelerating the performance of AutoCAD 2010 over the WAN, distributed AEC firms can quickly access large files for the design and development of new projects, resulting in real-time collaboration for employees in multi-site environments, and a reduction in operational and IT financial investments.

AEC firms depend heavily on AutoCAD to bring efficiencies to the design process and to tackle their most challenging design problems, using its robust 3D free-form design tools and powerful drafting and documentation capabilities. While the application is an outstanding tool for firms to standardize on for design purposes, organizations have found that the drawing files can sometimes exceed hundreds of megabytes in size on larger projects, which can impact employees’ ability to collaborate effectively. As a result, for firms with distributed offices or a global presence, sharing and collaborating on large CAD documents can often lead to significant delays in accessing drawings during normal file open and save operations. For this reason, many of the world’s leading AEC firms utilize Riverbed Steelhead appliances to accelerate the performance of their key applications so architects and engineers can collaborate between offices around the world as if they were in the same room.

Riverbed WAN optimization solutions can have a huge and immediate impact on the productivity of engineers and architects using AutoCAD 2010. Organizations that once waited 30 minutes to open a drawing can now access it in seconds. As a result, organizations experience a boost in application performance, allowing employees to collaborate in real-time; and IT managers see immediate cost savings by eliminating the need to purchase additional bandwidth.

For more information please visit www.riverbed.com.