BANGALORE, INDIA: Riverbed Technology and Singapore Telecommunications Ltd (SingTel) announced today that they are collaborating to provide the SingTel Traffic Optimization and Profiling Service Application Accelerator (TOPS AA) service based on Riverbed’s WAN optimization solutions.

The SingTel TOPS AA solution accelerates the delivery of data over WAN, improving the performance and speed of corporate applications such as e-mail, data back-up, web browsing, document sharing and management, ERP and CRM.

As the TOPS AA solution is fully managed by SingTel, customers need not worry about technology obsolescence, system upgrades and the ongoing cost of manpower to manage complex network infrastructure. It is offered with the option of utility-based pricing to allow customers to avoid heavy upfront investments during this period of economic downturn, and yet flexibly scale to meet growing business needs.

Bill Chang, SingTel’s Executive Vice President of Business, said: “SingTel is excited to work with Riverbed to enable companies to maximize the use of their international bandwidth and enjoy superior performance for their inter-office applications.  The TOPS AA service overcomes the issues of long distance communications to allow customers with offices around the world to do business like never before.”   

“As Asia Pacific's leading IP VPN service provider, SingTel is committed to providing an innovative one-stop Infocomm Technology (ICT) experience that helps businesses to reduce costs and be more productive,” adds Chang.

"Cutting cost while increasing efficiencies will be the mantra for IT departments in 2009," said Tracy Corbo, Senior Analyst for IDC. "This will require centralization and consolidation of IT personnel and services. Consequently, we believe that this will result in growing opportunities in the area of managed network services, with WAN optimization as one such service that can be readily outsourced through a service provider. The technology is already proven and as a managed service it offers both CAPEX savings as well as freeing up staff for other projects."

Jerry Kennelly, chairman and CEO of Riverbed, observed: “The market for WAN optimization and application acceleration has matured to the point that enterprises now demand solutions that deliver both savings in IT and WAN costs and better business outcomes such as improved operational efficiency, enhanced collaboration across extended enterprises, better business continuity and disaster recovery, and, of course, more effective home and mobile working.”

“Recently there has been a notable trend for companies of all sizes to seek to optimize their IT and networks through a managed service.  The collaboration between SingTel and Riverbed delivers on all fronts and we are very excited about the fact that SingTel, one of the world’s leading service providers, has chosen to base its offering on Riverbed,” added Kennelly