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Riverbed Extends WAN Optimization to Provide Even Greater Cost
Savings
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Oct 27, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) --
Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD), the technology and market leader
in wide-area data services (WDS), today announced the upcoming
release of enhanced versions of its Riverbed Optimization System
(RiOS(R)), Steelhead Mobile and Riverbed Services Platform (RSP),
which together will provide enterprises with the most comprehensive
solution for application acceleration and cost savings across the
data center, branch office, and mobile worker. With these releases,
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.
Riverbed(R) continues to innovate in areas that directly impact
bottom lines. To help customers make the most of their existing
infrastructure, Riverbed has focused beyond its core product offerings
with enhancements to its Riverbed Services Platform (RSP), the
industry's first integrated platform for third-party software
modules, built on enterprise-class virtualization technology from
VMware. Riverbed also introduces a set of industry firsts for WAN
optimization, accelerating Lotus Notes and MAPI encrypted traffic at
the application layer, as well as MAPI 2007 and Oracle Forms for
mobile workers. Each of these enhancements is a direct result of the
ongoing, in-depth relationships Riverbed has with key partners,
including VMware and Microsoft. In addition, Riverbed broadens its
solutions to provide faster, more cost-effective replication and
backup among data centers.
"Riverbed focuses on providing tools to our customers that help them
save money immediately, while meeting the strategic requirements of
their businesses. Our development priorities come directly from
ongoing dialogue with customers to better understand their needs as
they are forced to do more with less," said John Martin, vice
president of product management at Riverbed. "We anticipate that
customers will continue to look to Riverbed to deliver industry
firsts such as the RSP, which helps drive infrastructure costs down,
enhance the productivity of the workforce, and enable business to be
more resilient in times of change."
The Branch Office of Tomorrow: Steelhead Mobile 2.0
Organizations depend on smart people -- not offices -- for
competitive advantage. They want to hire the best talent and let them
work wherever they happen to be, while minimizing the real estate and
energy costs associated with on-site employees. At the same time, IT
is expected to keep up as mobile and remote users demand applications
that are always on and instantly available. To address this need,
Riverbed introduces Steelhead Mobile 2.0, which offers the
performance and security of the office without the IT infrastructure
costs associated with a physical location.
With the extension of Riverbed's SSL acceleration to Steelhead
Mobile, workers at home, on the road, or in small offices can now
experience LAN-like application performance with the security that IT
professionals demand. Riverbed offers the only WAN optimization
products with SSL encryption that maintain the preferred trust model,
providing end-to-end security for mobile workers and their data. This
level of protection enables businesses to reduce branch office costs
and let people work anywhere while ensuring that sensitive company
data is protected.
Branch Office Consolidation: Enhanced Riverbed Services Platform
(RSP)
Companies with branch offices continually seek more functionality
with lower capital investment. Riverbed has already helped many of its
more than five thousand customers consolidate file servers and
application servers back to the data center, but many services
continue to operate in the branch.
With today's launch, Riverbed has enhanced its RSP offering with
virtualization based on VMware. The RSP allows customers to
virtualize essential third-party software modules into Steelhead(R)
appliances, allowing further consolidation of their IT infrastructure
at the branch and even greater ROI on their Steelhead appliance
investment. The enhanced RSP is an enterprise-class platform that
enables a drastic reduction in the branch office IT footprint by
running up to five remote office third-party software modules --
without the need for separate dedicated servers.
Unlike alternative offerings, Riverbed allows branch office partner
software to leverage the RiOS acceleration pathway, providing greater
flexibility and intelligence. The RSP is available across a range of
existing Steelhead appliances, so existing customers do not need a
"fork-lift" upgrade to take advantage of this new functionality. This
approach will allow IT managers to improve asset utilization,
operational efficiency and business agility; control IT costs and
ensure end-user satisfaction; and ultimately make the server-less
branch office a reality.
"The new version of the Riverbed RSP platform enables consolidation
of equipment from the edge to the data center, while still allowing a
virtualized platform at the edge to run required local services,"
said Jeff Wilhelm, vice president, Information Technology, AccuData
Integrated Marketing.
Partnerships
Riverbed has forged partnerships with best-of-breed vendors to host
third-party applications and services qualified on the new
VMware-powered RSP, including:
-- Secure Computing for Unified Threat Management (UTM)
-- Infoblox for DNS/DHCP
-- Wowza Media Systems and Qumu for streaming media
-- NetDialog and OPNET for application monitoring and analysis
In addition, customers will be able to run other software, such as
Microsoft Windows, on the RSP as a virtual machine.
"At Strand Associates, we have been early adopters of the RSP. Over
the last couple of months we've tested the enhanced RSP and
experienced additional consolidation benefits by hosting an entire
virtual platform on the Steelhead appliance. Now, we are able to
provide print services, Active Directory logon services, and IP
address management, all with a standard Windows server. As Strand
grows and opens remote offices, deploying the Riverbed Steelhead
appliance and running RSP will be the preferred solution," adds
Justin Marthaler, IT at Strand Associates, Inc.
Faster Data Protection at a Lower Cost: RiOS 5.5 Disaster Recovery
Features
Data protection poses a severe challenge for all organizations. The
large information footprint of data centers, combined with large,
expensive, long distance WAN connections between primary and
secondary data centers, often requires large IT investments that
cannot deliver the required recovery point objectives (RPOs) and
recovery time objectives (RTOs) that businesses need. To support
these requirements, Riverbed continues to develop additional software
capabilities within the same hardware platform that address
datacenter-to-datacenter environments.
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.
Enabling Employees to do More with Less
By accelerating the performance of applications, Riverbed helps
companies defer investments in desktop and WAN infrastructure while
allowing employees to accomplish more and achieve high productivity.
Enhanced Support for Lotus Notes Acceleration
Riverbed is the first vendor to provide support for Lotus Notes
acceleration at the application layer, which improves the speed at
which employees can access large email attachments and manage
calendaring, resulting in increased collaboration across distant
offices.
"Lotus Notes is an essential application for collaboration across our
distributed workforce. Recently, we tested the enhanced acceleration
feature for Lotus Notes and experienced 10 - 25x faster performance
for certain Lotus Notes operations. This type of performance gain
allows our employees to collaborate more effectively everywhere,"
said David Hogan, network engineer at Greene Tweed. "In addition,
Riverbed has enabled us to consolidate 20 Lotus Notes servers from 20
locations to five. With Riverbed, our Lotus Notes infrastructure is
more powerful and costs less to operate."
Accelerating Windows-Based Applications
Riverbed also expands its expertise and success accelerating and
optimizing Microsoft Windows-based applications over the WAN. With
RiOS 5.5, Riverbed is the first vendor to offer protocol optimization
for encrypted Exchange 2007 (MAPI) at the application layer.
Riverbed is the only vendor that provides application-level
optimization for Exchange 2000, 2003, and 2007 with or without
encryption. RiOS 5.5 also introduces enhanced support for secure
Microsoft Office environments, such as SMB signing. New Steelhead
Mobile enhancements include application layer acceleration of Oracle
Forms and Exchange 2007 (MAPI).
"Enabling the workforce with timely access to critical business
information has become a strategic and competitive differentiator for
businesses over the last five years. Solutions that support cost
cutting initiatives like IT consolidation and help to simplify data
management are in high demand," said Bob Laliberte, analyst at the
Enterprise Strategy Group. "Enterprises will continue to implement
solutions that maximize return on investment. Companies like Riverbed
that have offerings that scale for mobile users, remote offices and
data centers will be well positioned to capitalize on available
investments, even in an economic downturn."
New Hardware Appliances
New Steelhead appliances (xx50 models) provide simpler, more flexible
upgrade paths that provide greater investment protection to Riverbed
customers. This ensures that an appliance can grow with the needs of
the business and a given office. The new appliances also include
greater connection counts, enhanced resiliency features, and now
provide customers with a greater choice of options for price and
scalability requirements. To learn more about the new appliances,
please visit:
http://www.riverbed.com/products/appliances/upgrades.php.
When Can You Get It?
RiOS 5.5, Mobile 2.0 and the enhanced RSP will be generally available
in the fourth quarter of 2008. Partner RSP packages are sold
separately and purchased through the respective Riverbed partner.
General availability will vary.
To learn more about all of the new features of RiOS 5.5 and the
enhanced RSP, visit:
http://www.riverbed.com/docs/FeatureBrief-Riverbed-RiOS_5.5.pdf
To learn more about all of the new features of Mobile 2.0, visit:
http://www.riverbed.com/docs/FeatureBrief-Riverbed-SHM_2.0.pdf
Steelhead Products
Riverbed WDS solutions enable organizations of all sizes to overcome
a host of severe problems, including poor application performance and
insufficient bandwidth at remote sites. By speeding the performance of
applications between data centers, remote offices and mobile workers
by five to 50 times and in some cases up to 100 times, the Riverbed
award-winning Steelhead WDS products enable companies to consolidate
IT, improve backup and replication processes to ensure data
integrity, and improve staff productivity and collaboration.
Steelhead products have been deployed in organizations ranging from
the world's largest corporations with offices around the globe to
small companies with a couple of sites that are just miles apart. To
learn more, view Riverbed's demo: www.riverbed.com/pr/jack.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including
statements relating to the expected demand for Riverbed's products
and services, statements regarding customer payback following
implementation of Riverbed solutions that may suggest certain
outcomes, and statements relating to Riverbed's ability to meet the
needs of distributed organizations. These forward-looking statements
involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they
do not fully materialize or prove incorrect, could cause our results
to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such
forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties that could
cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or
implied by such forward-looking statements include our ability to
react to trends and challenges in our business and the markets in
which we operate; our ability to anticipate market needs or develop
new or enhanced products to meet those needs; the adoption rate of
our products; our ability to establish and maintain successful
relationships with our distribution partners; our ability to compete
in our industry; fluctuations in demand, sales cycles and prices for
our products and services; shortages or price fluctuations in our
supply chain; our ability to protect our intellectual property
rights; general political, economic and market conditions and events;
and other risks and uncertainties described more fully in our
documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange
Commission. More information about these and other risks that may
impact Riverbed's business are set forth in our Form 10-Q filed with
the SEC on July 29, 2008. All forward-looking statements in this
press release are based on information available to us as of the date
hereof, and we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking
statements. Any future product, feature or related specification
that may be referenced in this release are for information purposes
only and are not commitments to deliver any technology or
enhancement. Riverbed reserves the right to modify future product
plans at any time.
About Riverbed
Riverbed Technology is the technology and market leader in wide-area
data services (WDS) solutions for companies worldwide. By enabling
application performance over the wide area network (WAN) that is
orders of magnitude faster than what users experience today, Riverbed
is changing the way people work, and enabling a distributed workforce
that can collaborate as if they were local. Additional information
about Riverbed (NASDAQ: RVBD) is available at www.riverbed.com.
Riverbed Technology, Riverbed, Steelhead, RiOS, Interceptor, and the
Riverbed logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riverbed
Technology, Inc. All other trademarks used or mentioned herein
belong to their respective owners.
MEDIA CONTACT
Kristalle Ward
Riverbed Technology
415-247-8140
Email Contact
INVESTOR RELATIONS CONTACT
Renee Lyall
Riverbed Technology
415-247-6353
Email Contact
SOURCE: Riverbed Technology
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