Riverbed named application acceleration hardware partner for Microsoft Technology Centres

Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD), the IT performance company, today announced that the company has been named by Microsoft as an application acceleration hardware partner in the worldwide network of Microsoft Technology Centres (MTCs).

This partnership enables joint customers to interact with solutions experts and test joint Riverbed-Microsoft solutions in a high-performance environment. Riverbed and Microsoft have partnered on several key product areas, allowing enterprises to drastically improve collaboration by leveraging Microsoft enterprise software solutions over the wide area network (WAN) and in the cloud.

“Microsoft Technology Centres include hardware and software from industry leading partners - including Riverbed - that our joint customers are able to access during their engagements. Customers will now have the opportunity to test drive Riverbed WAN optimisation solutions to accelerate application traffic over the WAN and get the most out of their Microsoft deployments,” said Chuck McCann, Worldwide MTC alliances program director, Microsoft.

Microsoft Technology Centres are collaborative environments that provide access to innovative technologies and world-class expertise, enabling organisations to envision, design and deploy enterprise IT solutions to meet their specific needs. With 22 MTCs around the world, prospective Riverbed-Microsoft customers will be able to participate in architecture design sessions and proof of concept workshops, enabling them to design cutting-edge enterprise IT solutions.

“Riverbed has worked closely with Microsoft to help ensure that joint customers realise the best possible performance for their Microsoft enterprise applications,” said Venugopal Pai, vice-president of global alliances, Riverbed. “This partnership is further proof of the deep relationship between Riverbed and Microsoft, which enables organisations to confidently leverage Microsoft software solutions over the WAN and in the cloud.”

Businesses worldwide rely on Microsoft's enterprise software products such as SharePoint and Exchange, and are turning to Riverbed for WAN optimisation solutions to accelerate business agility and improve productivity while reducing costs. As a result, Microsoft customers adopting Riverbed WAN optimisation solutions are enabling their businesses to take advantage of application acceleration, cloud infrastructures, virtualisation, faster WAN data backups and bandwidth optimisation technologies, and local area network (LAN)-like performance for business-critical Microsoft applications over the WAN.

More than 13 000 organisations worldwide, across a wide range of markets, depend on Riverbed to understand, optimise and consolidate their IT infrastructure. Riverbed delivers hardware, software and virtualised solutions that overcome performance issues caused by distance, distributed computing, and ever increasing amounts of data. Virtualisation, consolidation and cloud computing promise huge cost savings and improved efficiencies, but as users move farther from their data, slow applications and file transfers can stall these strategic initiatives. Riverbed delivers to the remote office and mobile workers the same “LAN-like” performance, no matter where the private data centre or public cloud may be. Riverbed continues building on its success in the WAN optimisation and application aware network performance management (NPM) markets with new and innovative solutions for accelerating cloud storage and access to applications and data deployed in public, private and hybrid clouds.

For additional information on how Riverbed accelerates Microsoft solutions, please visit www.riverbed.com.

Forward-looking statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements relating to the expected demand for Riverbed's products and services, and statements relating to Riverbed's ability to 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 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 April 29, 2011. 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.