Riverbed delivers acceleration everywhere

BANGALORE, INDIA: Riverbed Technology has extended its market leading Steelhead wide area network (WAN) optimizationproduct family with the addition of a new hardware appliance and upgrades to its Steelhead software.

Steelhead WAN optimization solutions can now accelerate a broader range of enterprise infrastructures while expanding IT control and ease of management, including smaller branch offices, cloud infrastructures, SAAS applications, and locations served by hybrid networks. These extensions make the Steelhead WAN optimization product family an even more critical part of delivering application performance across the entire business and extends the commitment from Riverbed® to deliver acceleration everywhere.

Enhancements to the Steelhead product family include an upgraded Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS®) 8.5, the software that powers market-leading Riverbed Steelhead WAN optimization solutions, and the addition of a new hardware appliance, the Steelhead CX 255 series appliance. Path selection, a new feature in RiOS 8.5, simplifies the management of hybrid MPLS and Internet networks while delivering maximum performance.

New application optimizations extend the Steelhead appliance's lead in delivering the broadest set of optimizations for applications important to business. Integration with Riverbed Cascade Profiler, a leading application-aware network performance management solution, helps IT managers meet application SLAs. These enhancements and additions to the award-winning Steelhead product family allow IT organizations to more cost-effectively give end users across the organization the performance they need while maintaining control and minimizing complexity.

"It is critical for us to rapidly adopt new technologies that help us to reduce costs, boost productivity, and enhance collaboration," said Ray Sirois, director of IT, at Wright-Pierce, a leading provider of water, wastewater and infrastructure engineering services. "By delivering accelerated performance cost efficiently across our entire infrastructure, Riverbed WAN optimization is at the heart of our ability to improve both the way and pace that our employees work."

IT organizations face demands from their end users for access and speed, regardless of device or location, yet must still manage the network efficiently and securely. With their broad set of application optimizations and deployment options, ease of installation and management, and now the ability to manage multiple access methods with path selection, Riverbed WAN optimization solutions are uniquely positioned to allow businesses to manage these complex IT environments.

"Network architects should revise WAN architectures to improve performance for external cloud applications and resources. While Internet VPNs and Ethernet services will play a greater role in the enterprise WAN over the next two to four years, it will largely be as part of a hybrid network, blended with MPLS service to ensure delivery of the performance, availability, and feature functionality that businesses desire," noted Gartner analysts, Andrew Lerner and Neil Rickard.