Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD), the performance company, today announced new Steelhead models - the Steelhead 150 appliance and Virtual Steelhead 150 - as part of its comprehensive wide area network (WAN) optimisation product suite.
With these additions to the Steelhead product family, businesses in emerging markets, retail customers, and governments and municipalities that have minimal bandwidth or few users at each location, as well as current customers who would like to extend the deployment to offices with fewer employees, can obtain a cost-effective solution that optimises bandwidth and reduces remote infrastructure.
“Many enterprises have made their initial investments in WAN optimisation to achieve branch office server consolidation and reduced WAN bandwidth costs,” states Joe Skorupa, VP, Distinguished Analyst at Gartner Research. “However, the increasing use of dynamic browser-based applications like SharePoint and the introduction of unified communications and collaboration applications and virtual desktops, will require enterprises to evaluate and deploy acceleration technologies in a variety of sizes and form factors to achieve greater performance across their entire infrastructure.”
The Riverbed Steelhead WAN optimisation solution is leveraged by globally dispersed organisations to improve and accelerate application performance across the WAN while significantly reducing the amount of traffic on the network. WAN optimisation enables distributed workforces to collaborate in real-time by providing LAN-like access to data and applications throughout the enterprise, including mobile workers, branch offices, data centres and clouds.
Enterprises utilising Riverbed WAN optimisation solutions have accelerated performance of many of the most commonly used applications across the network from five to 50 times, even up to 100 times in some cases, while streamlining operations, improving visibility and reducing the costs of IT infrastructure.
Retail enterprises with thousands of locations, budget-conscious governments and municipalities, and financial institutions that need to connect to their thousands of ATMs and rural branches that have just a few users at each location are all looking to WAN optimisation to reduce their bandwidth and remote infrastructure costs. They need to reduce bandwidth costs for ongoing IT operations, while also improving collaboration and application response times. With the introduction of the new models, these organisations will be able to deploy Steelhead appliances in the form factor most appropriate for their locations and needs.
In addition, the new Steelhead appliance models provide robust WAN optimisation solutions for locations in emerging markets that require low-cost flexible deployment models.
Lastly, for organisations that have already deployed Steelhead appliances in their data centres and larger remote locations, the new models will allow them to further consolidate and virtualise their infrastructure by extending the speed and optimisation benefits of WAN optimisation to their smallest offices. The organisation gets the control and security of centralised data while remote employees are able to download key applications and data without delay.
“Our new Steelhead appliances, both physical and virtual, provide vertical markets, such as retail, healthcare and even SMB organisations, with a cost-effective solution to reduce bandwidth utilisation at remote locations,” said John Martin, senior vice-president of product management at Riverbed.
More than 17 000 organisations worldwide depend on Riverbed to understand, optimise and consolidate their IT infrastructure, through solutions that overcome performance issues caused by distance, distributed computing, and ever increasing volumes of data. As IT organisations embark on strategic initiatives to virtualise, consolidate and migrate workloads into cloud environments, users are moved farther from their data, and slow applications, file transfers and inefficient Web sites negatively impact the performance of these initiatives.
Riverbed transforms IT performance by providing solutions spanning WAN optimisation, edge virtual server infrastructure (edge-VSI), application-aware network performance management (NPM), application delivery, Web content optimisation (WCO), and cloud data protection for backup and disaster recovery. By providing the broadest portfolio of performance solutions that deliver anywhere, any application optimisation, Riverbed enables organisations to increase productivity and efficiency, while enhancing business resilience and controlling costs.
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 performance results of Riverbed solutions and customer cost savings resulting from implementation of Riverbed solutions that may suggest likely or certain outcomes, and statements relating to Riverbed's ability to grow market share and meet the needs of distributed organisations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they do not fully materialise or prove incorrect, could cause the company's results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include its ability to react to trends and challenges in the business and the markets in which it operates; its ability to anticipate market needs or develop new or enhanced products to meet those needs; the adoption rate of its products; its ability to establish and maintain successful relationships with its distribution partners; its ability to compete in its industry; fluctuations in demand, sales cycles and prices for its products and services; shortages or price fluctuations in its supply chain; its ability to protect its intellectual property rights; general political, economic and market conditions and events; and other risks and uncertainties described more fully in 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 its Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on 30 April 2012. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to the company as of the date hereof, and it assumes 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.
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