Atlas, designed to improve the efficiency of enterprise storage, is a stateless, diskless gateway appliance that logically sits in between the primary storage device and the data center Steelhead. "It will address one of the critical issues in IT operations - the exploding amounts of storage," says Josh Tseng, director, technical marketing, Riverbed.

Explaining further, he says, "This storage product takes what we do for your network and applies the same technology for storage. It leverages Steelhead appliances to optimize and scale primary storage," Tseng adds. "Atlas is a transparent solution. Customers can continue to leverage the existing storage network and infrastructure."

Atlas can eliminate up to 95 percent of redundant data in enterprise storage systems. It eliminates redundancy, which typically burdens IT infrastructure by slowing down access to data and applications and increasing costs and operational overhead of data management. Riverbed plans to start shipping Atlas in the first half of 2009.

Giving details about other products Riverbed launched in Q4 2008, Tseng touched upon Steelhead Mobile 2.0, RiOS 5.0 and Enhanced Riverbed Services Platform (RSP).

Steelhead Mobile 2.0 - Provides secure acceleration for the mobile enterprise. The Steelhead Mobile 1.0 has been available since August 2007, where tens of thousands of licenses have been deployed across multiple verticals.

"Steelhead Mobile 2.0 is a truly integrated branch, mobile worker and a datacenter solution. It has the same algorithm and the same technology. It allows for 10x - 80x faster performance across the applications that are more crucial for mobile workers in a significantly reduced amount of time," explains Tseng. In all the Steelhead Mobile 2.0 offers security, speed and simplicity.

Riverbed's Steelhead appliances and Steelhead Mobile Software has the benefits of Green IT, which helps in reducing energy costs. With Steelhead Mobile, enterprises can give mobile workers LAN-like access to corporate files and applications no matter where they are, anywhere in the world.

Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS 5.5) - With data protection posing a severe challenge for enterprises across sizes, RiOS 5.5 offers faster data Protection at a lower cost. With RiOS 5.5, IT managers are provided faster replication that utilizes less WAN bandwidth. Customers can now use one-quarter the bandwidth while completing the same replication task in a smaller window of time, immediately saving money for the business while providing the necessary data protection. Riverbed achieves this by intelligently increasing LAN-speed throughput on large-scale transfers, reaching speeds of up to 1 Gigabit on a single device, and even more in clustered deployments.

What's new in RiOS 5.5?
Lotus notes acceleration - Improves the performance of Lotus notes significantly when you are on Riverbed.
SMB signing support - Aimed at security-conscious SMBs, who look for authentication.
Also enables latency optimization and protocol chattiness even when security signatures are used.
RiOS 5.5 also offers MAPI Encryption support and MS Office optimization. It also has newly advanced DR intelligence for very high optimal WAN connections. Also has enhanced RSP functionality and better traffic visibility.

Riverbed Services Platform (RSP) - Is the industry's first integrated platform for third-party software modules, built on enterprise-class virtualization technology from VMware. "RSP is an open framework that allows customers to curtail whatever applications they want on the Riverbed framework," adds Tseng.

RSP is highly scalable and offers more throughput where the additional capacity allows for significant data transfer. As regards hardware requirements, it requires additional; RAM upgrades.

Steelhead Mobile and Riverbed Services Platform (RSP) together provide enterprises with the most comprehensive solution for application acceleration and cost savings across the data center, branch office, and mobile worker.

Indian market: "India is a prime market for Riverbed as more number of Indian companies are adopting our solutions. Customers are now looking at differentiation. The market here is 100 percent channel centric," says Vivek Singh, regional director - India, Riverbed.

When we talk of channels, there is lot of interest in storage partners. While one aspect is the 'go-to-market', the other is through managed service providers (MSPs). The third set is the technology alliance partners, who number more than 50, says Vivek.

With the release of these products, Riverbed enables enterprises to further consolidate IT infrastructure, enhance worker productivity and accelerate data protection, helping CIOs support a more efficient workforce and IT environment while reducing operational and financial investment.