The Riverbed Blog

Riverbed customer testimonial - Willis

Virtualizing Networks

Denise Dubie's blog in Network World makes some interesting observations on virtualization technology.  Recently-available and widely-deployed technologies have made it easy virtualize servers, storage, and desktop resources.  Server virtualization has allowed one managed server to deliver the capabilities of multiple servers.  Storage virtualization and thin provisioning allow us to obtain more storage utilization out of a given physical amount of storage capacity. And of course, desktop virtualization allows one physical workstation to access multiple virtual desktops.

According to Denise, the network hasn't received much attention in the area of virtualization yet.  But she further states that "...the network will emerge from behind the scenes to command center stage and play a pivotal role in tomorrow's virtualized environments."

I agree with Denise's observations and projections, but I propose that her "tomorrow" is already happening today.  Today, more than 4500 Riverbed customers are getting virtualized performance and throughputs through their WAN infrastructure.  Let me show you what I mean...

It's the architecture stupid!

What makes Riverbed's products so special and unique?  If I had a dollar for every time I hear this question, the college tuition for my 3 daughters would be paid in full.  The market for optimizing and accelerating applications over WANs is crowded with vendors trying to grab a piece of the very big WAN optimization/wide-area data services market pie.

While these vendors are working to differentiate themselves, Riverbed continues to lead the pack with customer adoption at 4500+, a sweeping win of industry awards, and a continuous product cycle that has resulted in innovative features and new products.  Instead of using this blog post to talk about Riverbed's unique product features, I will save that for our crack marketing team and use this post to talk about another angle of Riverbed's product differentiation - the fact that Riverbed has the only purpose built architecture

Riverbed goes Virtual with VMware

One of the big news items of the day is the announced partnership between Riverbed and VMware and how Riverbed will be providing VMware's virtual platform as the base for running branch office services directly on Riverbed's award-winning Steelhead appliance.

Some of you may be asking why would I want to run services on a device that was designed to accelerate applications over the WAN?

WDS as a disruptive technology

Last night I was cleaning out some old boxes in the closet.   Not wanting to throw out anything useful, I examined the contents of one box, and came across my prized camera from a bygone age, the one I had taken on numerous trips to exotic locations in Thailand, Indonesia, China, etc...  It conjured up many nostalgic memories from the late 1990's, from before I was married, when I was able to roam and travel, free from the many responsibilities that I have now. 

But this camera is now useless.  There's just no way I'd be willing to make trips to Costco anymore to drop off film, and then have to wait for a week before seeing the results of my efforts.  Now, I use a digital camera, and I can view my photos instantaneously in the camera's LCD, and I can have prints within minutes if I wanted them, by just uploading the digital photos to my computer and using my own color printer.