Riverbed Technology Enhances WAN Application Performance Solutions with Pre-Population and Central Management Console

Business Wire, Oct 25, 2004

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Architecture Firm Adopts Latest Steelhead Appliance for Storage Consolidation Project

Riverbed(TM) Technology, the performance leader in application acceleration over wide area networks (WANs), announced today enhanced functionality to its Riverbed Steelhead network appliances. The new functionality in version 1.1 adds a central management console and sends data across the WAN to remote Steelhead appliances before the data is requested to reduce latency and speed up file transfers over distributed networks by up to 100 times.

Riverbed's Steelhead appliances speed up performance over distributed networks for core applications used by enterprises to conduct every-day business activities such as email systems like Exchange(R) and Notes(R), file access, backup, and Web-based business applications like ERP and CRM. The Steelhead appliances solve both the limited bandwidth and high latency issues associated with moving all types of data over a WAN. The new functionality, called Transparent Pre-Population, eliminates the problem of optimizing unique or non-redundant traffic and makes the process of sending data over a distributed network much more efficient.

"Transparent Pre-Population gives Steelhead yet another method for speeding up application performance over distributed networks," said Steve McCanne, CTO, Riverbed Technology. "By combining this new functionality with Steelhead's already revolutionary distributed systems optimization technology we have frequently been able to improve application performance by up to 100 times, and sometimes significantly higher, compared to 3-5 times cited by our competitors."

The Transparent Pre-Population technology automatically pushes data over the WAN before the client requests the data. For example, if a user in San Francisco accesses an email server in New York every morning, the Steelhead device can predict that action and transfer the data that comprises the user's emails over the WAN hours before the user requests the actual email. This allows the email to be accessed at local speeds instead of at the sluggish pace normally experienced over the WAN. Combined with Riverbed's Transaction Prediction technology, which predicts client-server transactions, Riverbed cleans up inefficient protocols like MAPI (Exchange) and CIFS (Windows) and reduces the number of trips over the WAN. Steelhead also optimizes TCP behavior that improves the performance of any applications that are limited by TCP, like Lotus Notes, FTP and HTTP.

"This kind of transaction prediction technology is an industry first," said Brad O'Neill, senior analyst at The Taneja Group. "Pushing data out to the client before it is requested gives end users fingertip access to vital information housed hundreds, even thousands of miles away. This moves data transparency to the next level, and businesses will demand it now."

Chapman Technical Group, a full-service consulting firm of engineers, architects, interior designers and landscape architects, is currently taking advantage of the new technology in the Steelhead appliances to consolidate its storage network at its headquarters in St. Albans, West Virginia. By consolidating storage resources to one location, the IT staff at Chapman Technical Group is able to provide storage services to more than 40 professionals and support personnel scattered throughout West Virginia while decreasing storage management costs and reducing non-compliance risk.

"Steelhead appliances have allowed us to really simplify our distributed storage into one consolidated instance," said Roger Kennedy, the network administrator at Chapman Technical Group. "We now operate out of one consolidated storage system in our main office and have one back up/archival/disaster recovery system and related servers to manage. Before deploying Riverbed's products, we had to maintain duplicate systems at a variety of remote sites to support our end users."

Also new in Riverbed's Steelhead 1.1 is a new security functions that makes it easier to authenticate security policies. Data flowing through the network appliance is protected through Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) authentication techniques. In addition, Steelhead can be protected by a RADIUS/TACAS authentication option for IT managers when they login the management console.

Riverbed's Steelhead 1.1 network appliances start at $5,995 and are generally available now.

ABOUT RIVERBED TECHNOLOGY

Riverbed Technology develops solutions to enable enterprises to simplify and consolidate their IT infrastructure without compromising local application performance. Riverbed's Steelhead appliances make the most commonly used distributed systems running across the wide area network (WAN) perform up to 100 times faster. Riverbed was founded in 2002 by CEO Jerry M. Kennelly and chief technology officer Dr. Steve McCanne, a visionary recently identified by M.I.T.'s Technology Review as one of the top 100 young innovators in the world. Riverbed has received funding from Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and UV Partners, and has an engineering team that includes veterans from Microsoft, Inktomi, and Network Appliance. For more information, visit www.riverbed.com.