Riverbed Broadens Support for Enterprise Apps with New WAN Optimisation Release

In addition, in RiOS 7.0 Riverbed has integrated Cascade®Shark functionality intothe Steelhead®appliance to deliver on-demandpacket capture and analysis, allowing clients to leverage their Steelheadappliance for branch monitoring and troubleshooting. Riverbed is the onlyvendor to provide this level of integration between wide areanetwork optimization anda networkperformance management solution.

"The increasing adoption of technologies just as live video, UDP andIPv6 are helping change the way organizations do business," said Lucinda(Cindy) Borovick, innovation vice president for the enterprise communications anddata center networks services at IDC. "With this release, Riverbed is raisingthe bar even furthermore by adding to its already robust list of optimizations forits Steelhead appliance by tackling these technologies that are often timesbandwidth-intensive. By as well adding embedded Cascade Shark functionality intothe Steelhead appliance and QoS enhancements, clients have the tools totroubleshoot performance problems quickly and prioritize applications that arecritical to business success."

Market leaderbecause its product development is driven

"Riverbed is a market leaderbecause its product development is driven by customer needs," said Miles Kelly,senior director of product marketing at Riverbed. "New support for UDP and IPv6underscore our ongoing focus on expanding capabilities in RiOS to align withthe new IT initiatives our clients undertake, based directly on ourconversations with them. Just in case, as the company with the broadest set ofoptimizations for the applications important to enterprises, we will continueto address dynamic applications and specific use cases just as disasterrecovery, VDI and unified communications and collaboration."

With the enhancements inRiOS 7.0, Riverbed extends its capabilities to provide organizations with jointsolutions for complete, end-to-end video optimization for live and on-demandcontent. Riverbed now offers optimization for delivery of video content withnative stream splitting capabilities over HTTP. With stream splittingtechnology, as well known as application layer multicasting, a single video streamcan serve a large number of viewers in a particular location, enabling videoscalability for live video, providing high-quality viewing and freeing morebandwidth across the WAN for other applications. For on-demand streaming,clients can combine data streamlining to store on-demand videos in branchlocations, QoS to prioritize bandwidth utilization, and prepositioning toproactively improve users' video experience. These live and on-demandoptimization capabilities as well leverage current partnerships with leading videocontent management solutions providers just as Polycom, Adobe, Qumu andMediaPlatform. With these integrated solutions, organizations can not onlyenhance video production and content management nevertheless also delivery anddistribution.

Riverbed now offers nativestream splitting for Adobe Flash over HTTP. With the new stream splittingcapability, organizations using Adobe Flash Media now have a powerful solutionto deliver multimedia communication and collaboration solutions to remoteemployees for live broadcasts as then as videos on demand. Riverbed'svideo optimization capabilities will enable scalable and efficient delivery forCEO/CxO broadcasts, training and compliance videos, employee-generated videocontent, and more.

Riverbed as well is the firstto offer stream splitting for Microsoft Silverlight. Microsoft Silverlight is apowerful tool for creating and delivering rich Internet business applicationsand premium media experiences on the Web. With the new stream splittingtechnology, organizations using Microsoft Silverlight can now use more videowith freedom for the purposes of training and internal communications,effectively without increasing bandwidth capacity or negatively impacting theperformance of other applications.

As many organizations areturning to desktop virtualization to centralize critical data and deliver ITresources more efficiently, Riverbed delivers solutions to help overcome WANconstraints just as latency, limited bandwidth, and an inability to prioritizeinteractive traffic that cause virtual desktop performance to slow down. TheRiverbed Steelhead product family helps organizations get the most out of theirvirtual desktop deployments by optimizing traffic for the broadest range ofsolutions. Currently Riverbed clients can overcome the performance barriersto delivering desktop virtualization for organizations utilizing CitrixXenApp and XenDesktop, VMwareView, and Microsoft RDPand RemoteFX. To furthermore enable organizations to adopt a virtual desktopinfrastructure and enhance end-user productivity, Riverbed is delivering newcapabilities in RiOS 7.0 with optimization for ICA over secure socket layer. Additionally, a new client drivemapping feature enables organizations to optimize content accessed directlyfrom a thin client, including thumb drives.

As organizations deploy newapplications, including rich media content, in branch offices, end users cometo expect a LAN-like experience. Conclusively, IT administrators need to be ableto pinpoint and resolve application performance problems quickly so that endusers in the branch office aren't negatively impacted. The Riverbed Cascadefamily of application-aware NPM solutions offers an elegant and simple designthat deploys easily in complex networks and provides true integration with theSteelhead product family. With RiOS 7.0, Riverbed has extended thatintegration, allowing clients with Cascade Pilot toleverage Steelhead appliances in branch offices for on-demand packet captureand remote analysis without having to transfer huge packet capture files overthe network. Now, IT administrators can detect and respond to applicationperformance problems without expanding their hardware footprint.

"The integration ofon-demand packet capture capabilities in RiOS 7.0 enables our organization toget more out of our investment in Steelhead appliances," said Tim Kokes,systems engineer at Rudolph Technologies, aleading provider of process characterization equipment and software for waferfabs and advanced packaging facilities. "We can now respond faster toperformance issues at our remote sites without having to expand our hardwarefootprint, which as well translates to secondary benefits including cost savingsand fewer nodes to manage across our network. As well, some of the newoptimizations in RiOS 7.0 provided us with improved performance for criticalapplications just as Microsoft Outlook. The end result is more productiveemployees, improved network uptime, and fewer bandwidth constraints, whichleaves more room for other applications like VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), so we no longer experiencedropped calls."

Riverbed's Skipware®software now integrates directly with RiOS 7.0. Skipware is based on theproprietary commercial implementation of the Space Communications ProtocolStandard, which has become the de facto standard for US Department ofDefense satellite networking environments. Skipware enables organizations toovercome severe performance degradation caused by weather and otherinterference that jeopardizes mission-critical communications. Earlier,Skipware was available only as a package on the Riverbed Services Platform(RSP).

The globally connected enterprise

Riverbed delivers performance for the globally connected enterprise.With Riverbed, enterprises can successfully and intelligently implementstrategic initiatives just as virtualization, consolidation, cloud computing,and disaster recovery without fear of compromising performance. By givingenterprises the platform they need to understand, optimize and consolidatetheir IT, Riverbed helps enterprises to build a fast, fluid and dynamic ITarchitecture that aligns with the business needs of the organization.Additional information about Riverbed is available at www.riverbed.com.

Riverbedand any Riverbed product or service name or logo used herein are trademarks ofRiverbed Research, Inc. All other trademarks used herein belong to theirrespective owners.