Riverbed’s WAN Optimisation solutions are part of Gen-i’s new suite of managed services announced in Telecom’s second quarter briefing last month.

Riverbed’s ANZ managing director Steve Dixon says trials have begun with some corporate and government users. “We work with their [Gen-i] teams to do a trial of connectivity if necessary and help with any technical design parts. They’ve put together all the backend processes and support infrastructure but there’s four or five really quite large engagements that they are already working on – can’t say who, as they are all new,” he told Telecommunications Review.

Dixon, who leads a team of around 25 staff in Australia and New Zealand says the fastest growing market for WAN Optimisation solutions is carriers looking to move into offering services such as cloud and hosting service. “Gen-i is critical for us,” says Dixon. “It’s taken us about 18 months to actually put all this in place with them.”

Dixon says Riverbed work for other carriers, such as AT&T in New Zealand. However, the difference with Gen-i is that they are using their managed services offering to push into the Australian market. “Gen-i is quite enthusiastic in its trans-Tasman communications,” he says. “They’re leveraging what they’re doing in New Zealand to try and get into Australia.”

The next step is to look at implementing Riverbed’s mobile client on the XT Network, which if they did so, would be a first. “We’ve had our mobile client for two years, but what we haven’t had is a service provider,” he says. “We’ve still got field trials and development to do.”

Dixon, who’s based in Australia, wasn’t aware of the recent XT outages that have affected mobile users south of Taupo but he says they haven’t progressed beyond initial discussions. “There’s still some work to be done, so we haven’t actually got involved with it yet but something we’re talking about it,” he says.

When asked about whether the government-backed fibre broadband projects in both New Zealand and Australia could eventually reduce the need for WAN Optimisation solutions, Dixon was skeptical. Performance is more often impaired by latency rather than speed, as he told TR in the November print edition: “It’s not things going fast; it’s going wider. In the IT world when sending a file, before you can move data there are over 100 pieces of communication to check at the application level – then it has to wait for acknowledgment, then you move a bit more. It’s not driving between Auckland and Wellington once, it’s driving there and back 1000 times before you can say you’ve arrived. So 20-30 milliseconds’ delay doesn’t sound like a lot – but multiply it by 1000 times.”

Although Dixon who travels widely throughout Asia Pacific, described broadband connectivity in New Zealand as being “as slow as a dog”.