Riverbed announces extended relationship with Microsoft

Corporate IT Update, May 12, 2009

CORPORATE IT UPDATE-(C)1995-2009 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Riverbed Technology (Nasdaq:RVBD), an IT infrastructure performance company for networks, applications and storage, announced on Monday (11 May) that it has forged a deeper relationship with software company Microsoft Corp (Nasdaq:MSFT) to provide enterprises with distributed workers and offices improved performance for their Microsoft-based applications and services and to simplify their IT infrastructure.

According to the company, currently customers can run Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, including branch services such as Active Directory, DNS/DHCP, Media Streaming and Print Services, on the Riverbed Services Platform (RSP). As a next step, Riverbed will enable the deployment of Windows Server 2008 R2 on the RSP.

The RSP is an extensible virtualised data services platform enabling customers to deploy edge services that formerly required dedicated servers as virtual appliances. Customers can deploy these virtual appliances directly on Steelhead products to further reduce the hardware infrastructure footprint at the branch office, which lowers costs in operational overhead.

Microsoft has introduced BranchCache, a feature that is aimed at improving performance for Windows 7 users accessing file and web applications hosted on Windows Server 2008 R2 servers over the WAN. Riverbed enables the deployment of Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 on Steelhead appliances with the RSP. Customers currently deploy Windows Server on the RSP to consolidate services at the branch to reduce costs, including Active Directory, DNS/ DHCP, Media Streaming and Print Services. When Windows Server 2008 R2 is released, it can be deployed on the RSP and the BranchCache feature is a service that enterprises can use on the deployed Windows Server, the company said.

No financial details were disclosed.

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