The Steelhead devices are saving G&T time and money in several ways. For one, it has been able to reduce the bandwidth required to transmit data between his sites. For example, in Tavares and Dallas, G&T has dual T1 lines, at $500 to $800 per month, while Minneapolis, with the Steelhead appliance, is using DSL at $100 to $150 per month. "That's an immediate savings we can see," he said.

In addition, the devices require less maintenance, which means less travel for the IT staff, Tilmon said. "I don't have IT staff at all the sites," he said. "Minneapolis doesn't have anyone. If there's any issues, someone has to physically go up there" -- a trip that typically costs $2,000 every quarter.

Prior to turning to the WAN optimization appliances, G&T tried several other methods to improve data transfer speeds, such as implementing an FTP server, using e-mail and simply keeping multiple copies of files, but it ran into version control problems, Tilmon said.

Tilmon said he also looked at a virtual workplace implementation from Citrix Systems Inc. but decided that it was too expensive. He tried the Steelhead WAN optimization product on the suggestion of one of his local vendors. After testing it for a few weeks, he installed it a couple of months ago at three of his sites: in Dallas, at the headquarters in Tavares and at a remote site in Minneapolis.

Tilmon is now thinking about expanding the WAN optimization project to some of his other 29 remote offices, starting with Seattle and a collocation facility in Orlando. The devices also enable him to consider being able to centralize his data centers again after pushing resources such as mail servers and file servers out to remote sites to improve performance. "The advantage would be twofold: allow us easier administration of it, including enforcing standardization, and in version control and collaboration," he said.