The Riverbed Blog

Riverbed customer testimonial - Hilton Grand Vacations

 

Is lab testing enough?

Just imagine this scenario:  You are now five months into the deployment process rolling out devices from your chosen WAN optimization vendor.  The project was supposed to have been completed months ago, but it has been stalled for the last four months. The first 8 to 10 sites went relatively smoothly, and WDS devices were deployed to those initial sites in a matter of weeks.  But then problems started occuring when you attempted to deploy additional WAN optimization devices to your remaining sites.  As the number of sites having the devices grew beyond the initial few, application sessions started dropping.  Connections started slowing down.  End-users started complaining. You are concerned and frustrated, especially since the last 4 months have been spent bickering with the vendor about the original promises they made to you.

On the Road - Getting Around in New Cities

Wow, looking at our first two weeks of posts, I must say we look like work-obsessed maniacs.  Well that's only half true(*), so I'll jump to the fore and kick off a series on something of perhaps general interest.  One thing I've noticed while traveling the world is that conversations with other travelers are often about...travel!  Mostly horror stories, but occasionally "do not miss" advice, "can you believe it?" stories or travel tips.  So, since a fair number of the Riverbed bloggers travel a lot, seems like a topic we can rally behind.  I'll inaugurate with some travel tips for people who're traveling more and more (not really for grizzled vets).

Squeezing the global supply chain further

Even in the best of times, companies are always looking to save money and improve time-to-market.  The global outsourcing of the manufacturing supply chain, and even the information supply chain, that has occurred over the past decade embodies the desire of organizations to move as fast as possible in the most cost-efficient manner.

Riverbed employees take a pancake break

Our executive team recently awarded hard-at-work Riverbed employees with a much appreciated pancake breakfast.  This was not just an ordinary corporate breakfast event where employees line up to get a free meal from chaffing dishes piled high with various foods. 

Accelerate your Voice-over-IP?

It's widely acknowledged that Riverbed provides the best performance over the WAN for key applications in mainstream use, such as CIFS, Exchange, NFS, and various web applications.  Our competitors have a tough time dealing with that, so rather than compete head-on against Riverbed, some of them attempt to distinguish themselves in other areas such VoIP, Citrix, and other real-time applications  For example, the website of one Riverbed competitor claims "Up to 1,000% Citrix ICA acceleration over the WAN, with a consistent 300%."  The same vendor makes similar claims for accelerating VoIP and RDP traffic.  When I see these claims, I'm puzzled at their choice of words.  By "acceleration", I would hope they are not claiming the ability to allow the VoIP conversationalists to talk faster.  I would also reason that they are not claiming the ability to allow real-time data to travel faster than the speed of light.  So what does it mean to achieve "1000% acceleration" of VoIP and other real-time traffic types?

Experience with Steelhead Mobile across Asia (part 1)

In the last month or so I have been traveling across most of Asia giving sales and technical updates to our partners around the region. Riverbed has a physical presence in 16 countries around Asia Pacific & Japan, and we are active in over 20 countries, often in several cities in each - so it's been a busy couple of weeks !

During the course of these travels, I've found myself presented with an incredibly wide variety of network connectivity situations - each presenting their own challenges. Some of these have been truly startling, so I thought I'd share a few anecdotes with you and relate how having Steelhead Mobile on my PC has saved me time and money in an obvious and demonstrable way.

For example, I was in sunny Makati city in the Philippines two weeks ago and needed to download some revised presentation content for my partner update session that afternoon.

Unfortunately, the only connectivity available to me at the time was a 56k dialup circuit. Remember those ? Back in the day, 56kbps was flying, but for me trying to download 20 Megabytes worth of Powerpoint from our US servers, with a deadline fast approaching, it was a nail-biting experience.

Luckily for me however the presence of Riverbed's Steelhead Mobile PC client Acceleration software saved the day. Not only did it compress the data from 20 Megabytes down to about 3, it also dramatically accelerated the transfer time so I could get the information I needed and make it to my appointment armed with the all latest information. What a lifesaver ! Without this technology, I may still be there downloading now.

References--the critical step in evaluating WDS solutions

Two months ago, I was fed up with my Treo phone.  It was constantly rebooting and crashing, sometimes even during the middle of a call.  So at that point I decided I needed a new phone, but I didn't know what phone to get.  I asked my colleagues, friends, and business acquaintances about their phones, and how much they liked or disliked their phones.   The people I talked to had no motive for lying to me, so the information I got was accurate.  Eventually, after carefully evaluating all the feedback, I settled on a Blackberry 8830, and I must say I've been extremely happy with it.  I haven't experienced a single crash with my new phone.

What do CIOs really spend their time thinking about

I recently had the opportunity to see first hand what CIOs spend their time doing. I attended the annual technology forum of one of the 10 largest companies in the world.

Top 10 reasons I love working for Riverbed

My 5 1/2 years at Riverbed have been simply amazing.  From the people I work with to the city I work in, it is no wonder that Riverbed was named one the most admired companies.  So what makes Riverbed such as great company to work for?  Here are my top 10 reasons. 

10.  There is a really cool game room on the 5th floor where I work at HQ

 

Installing Cisco WAAS? Just pay professional services to do it!

A recent blog posted by Beth Pariseau in searchstorage shed some limited light on longstanding rumors we had been hearing about various problems EMC was having with Cisco WAAS.  It appears that EMC will now require customers buying Cisco WAAS to also purchase the Professional Services in order to install it.  This is a striking development from a vendor who's flagship product--the Symmetrix--is known to be so difficult configure that customers rarely attempt to do it themselves.  But while WAAS requires professional services for installation, no such requirement exists for the Symmetrix.  In fact, my friends who are EMC sales reps tell me they rarely--if ever--sell Professional Services whey they sell Symmetrix storage.

Can't We All Just Get Along???

I'm somewhat troubled, but quite amused and very entertained by the persistent sniping, back-biting and he-said-she-said attacks that still permeate the WDS/WAN optimization arena…

Riverbed's Apurva Dave interviewed at Interop