blogs.riverbed.com

Riverbed Named Q1 2010 Global Market Share Leader in WAN Optimization

Today Riverbed announced that it has been named by Gartner as the Q1 2010 market share leader in WAN optimization (the WOC Advanced Platform category).  In the same report, Riverbed was named the market share leader in the WOC category for 1Q 2010 based on revenue.

Q1 was a busy quarter for Riverbed from a product and technology standpoint as both consolidation and disaster recovery capabilities received a boost.

Riverbed enables additional IT consolidation opportunities by supporting branch office consolidation with the Riverbed Services Platform (RSP).

The RSP allows customers to create a branch office box (BOB) that can run up to five additional services or applications virtually in a protected partition on the Steelhead appliance. This approach allows customers to deploy a customized library of local services in all of their branch offices, without the need to deploy and maintain full-blown servers to run the applications. Riverbed has 14 qualified solutions on the RSP, including Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, and solutions from McAfee, Inc., Websense, Inc., Check Point® Software Technologies, Qumu, Infoblox Inc., and OPNET Technologies, Inc.

Whether an organization is focused on consolidating file servers, email servers, SAN or NAS devices, or remote tape backup libraries, Riverbed WAN optimization solutions will accelerate application performance, typically by five to 50 times and in some cases up to 100 times, over the WAN, and reduce WAN bandwidth utilization, typically by 60 to 95%.

Riverbed WAN Optimization Accelerates Disaster Recovery Initiatives

During Q1 2010, Riverbed introduced the Steelhead 7050 model appliance to meet the performance, reliability and flexibility requirements of large enterprises. The Steelhead 7050 more cost-effectively manages large-scale data center-to-data center replication, accelerates applications across many locations and users in an enterprise, and allows organizations to build large private cloud infrastructures. This model combines new levels of throughput and connection scalability with solid-state drives (SSD) and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) connectivity.
 
Riverbed WAN optimization solutions have been verified by Brocade Communications Systems Inc. as compatible with the Brocade 7500/FR4-18i Blade, according to the testing requirements of the Brocade Data Center Ready Program. In addition, Riverbed has partnerships with a variety of leading storage vendors, including Dell EqualLogic, Double-Take Software, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, NetApp and Symantec.
 
Most recently, Riverbed announced that as part of the EMC Select Program the company has been awarded the 2009 EMC® Partner Solution Award: Offering of the Year - Symmetrix®.

The rise of the 'false cloud'

I'm currently at the GigaOm Structure conference, listening to the CTO of Amazon. One of the more entertaining comments he made was that private clouds should be called false clouds. He certainly got a good chuckle from the audience , but what do you think?

Riverbed Think Fast Demo - Microsoft Exchange

Riverbed Think Fast Demo - Microsoft SharePoint

Riverbed announces RiOS 6.1 update for Steelhead appliances

A big day today in technology news. On the consumer side, Apple will be unveiling their new gadgets during their worldwide developer conference in San Francisco.

Not to be outdone, Riverbed is generating excitement today in the IT landscape with the launch of the RiOS 6.1, a hefty software update to Riverbed's award-winning Steelhead appliance.

RiOS 6.1 has new optimizations for Microsoft applications like Exchange 2010 and Microsoft Online Services and storage optimizations for SRDF and FCIP. There is HA support for RSP. With this release Riverbed delivers superior acceleration across a wide variety of infrastructure, thereby providing maximum performance for any cloud, architecture or application.

Riverbed is announcing a lot of Industry Firsts with this software update.

With RiOS 6.1, Riverbed is the first WAN Optimization vendor to offer optimizations for the following:

• Microsoft Exchange Server 2010(Encrypted and Unencrypted Mode
• Microsoft SharePoint 2010
• Microsoft Online Services (Exchange Online and SharePoint Online)
• SVVP Certified for Windows Server 2008 R2
• Lotus Notes 8.5
• EMC SRDF/A Optimization (Network and Application layer) and auto-configuration

Microsoft Optimizations
Accelerating Microsoft Applications from wherever they are located. With this release, customers running Exchange 2010 can see data reductions of up to 95% and more than 34 times faster transmission thereby reducing the effects of latency. There are enhanced optimizations for Share Point that further reduces the effects of latency and speeds up response time by up to 50% over previous versions of RiOS.
This release also provides support for optimizing Microsoft Online services aka Microsoft BPOS-D like Exchange Online and Share Point Online. The optimizations work in both encrypted and unencrypted environments for Exchange 2010 and Exchange Online.

Lotus Notes Optimizations
Enhanced support for optimizing Lotus Notes v8.5. For those customers with Lotus Domino and Notes environments, RiOS 6.1 delivers latency optimizations and improved application response times thereby improving the end user experience.
Storage Optimizations

Accelerating replication and DR traffic – enabling higher levels of data reduction and throughput
Customers that use EMC's Symmetrix V-MAX and DMX will benefit from a higher data reduction and better throughput due to the SRDF optimizations in this release. This release supports "auto-disable compression" for SRDF/A allowing for even better optimization for EMC environments. This release also provides FCIP optimizations and is certified and qualified with Brocade 7500 and Cisco MDS gateways.

Riverbed Services Platform (RSP) High Availability
Improved support for RSP in HA environments. RSP has been deployed successfully as a branch office box (BOB) solution across a wide array of customers. HA support for RSP allows customers the flexibility to consolidate branch office services without impacting availability.

Improved Network Resiliency
Added support in WCCP environments. With this release Riverbed is providing added support for multiple interfaces on the Steelhead appliance to participate in WCCP groups on one or more routers. This enables two use cases - load balancing traffic across multiple interfaces and fail-over to a secondary interface when the primary interface fails.

Central Management Console
RSP Management via CMCs. The CMC now can streamline the deployment and configuration of RSP and RSP packages. The new UI shows per-appliance health and status of RSP service and individual packages. Also there is now support for up to 2,000 Steelhead appliances managed by a single CMC

For me personally, the one issue I have with this software update is why is it named "6.1". Sure feels like a 7.0 update!  Riverbed customers have access this this software update by going to support.riverbed.com.

Steelhead appliance

Kenny Quan demonstrates Riverbed's flagship WAN optimization solution, the Steelhead appliance.

Branch Office Box

Faisal Memon demonstrates the Riverbed Services Platform, which provides the ability to run branch office services on a Steelhead appliance.

It’s (still) not just about bandwidth

It’s interesting to see how much has changed in the WAN (Wide Area Network) optimisation space over the last half a decade or more, yet some things haven’t changed much. Five years ago I recall a white paper had been written on the subject titled, “It’s not just about bandwidth”. At the time bandwidth reduction was a great story and the management reports within Steelhead were great at sharing how much bandwidth had been saved, but although some organisations were able to justify the business case on bandwidth alone many struggled. Saving bandwidth which gives rise to potential cost savings or as in most cases, defers bandwidth upgrades, is only part of the story and for most, a small part of the story. The real deal only happens as we speed up data across the WAN through either optimising the transport layer or better still accelerating the applications.

Now for some readers, this may not be anything new, it’s the bread and butter or simply put the basics of good solid WAN optimisation. But each week I am faced with questions from prospects & some journalists; with the advent of fibre everywhere, surely WAN optimisation struggles to add value right? Wrong!

Admittedly, if we run dark fibre from point A to point B over a relatively short distance and we connect our IT equipment at each end, with no service provider equipment in between then yes, WAN optimisation does not necessarily have a part. Bandwidth may be in plentiful supply but, more importantly, the biggest barrier to success across the WAN is latency and with dark fibre over a relative short distance the latency will be extremely low.

Today a number of service providers are upgrading their network to fibre only, offering much higher bandwidth options, in some cases up to 100Mbps and doing so cost effectively. This is great news for consumers and businesses, there’s no question about that but even with the almighty increase in bandwidth the latencies don’t go away over night. So if the issue is the speed of light, will increasing the bandwidth make the speed of light go faster? In short, no, as it still faces the same problems it did before. We can carry more traffic, hold more video conversations make more voice over IP calls and transfer larger files, but nothing goes any faster until we resolve the latency issue.

I recall a quote from Steve McCann, CTO of Riverbed Technology that was something like “The only way to overcome the speed of light is to not make the trip in the first place”. And it stands true today, more bandwidth is good, but once any bottlenecks have been overcome through either more bandwidth or a more efficient use of bandwidth the only way to make things go faster across your WAN is to optimise traffic leveraging technology such as the Riverbed optimisation system (RIOS).

So the idea that new fibre networks from service providers will provide more bandwidth is great, and I am sure technology development will improve for many, many years to come and continuingly increase in the phenomenon of more available bandwidth. But there is as much today as there was at the beginning of Riverbed and will be for many, many years to come a place for WAN optimisation technology as part of any IT infrastructure build to accelerate the data transferred across the WAN.

What do you think?

 

WAN Optimization, Security, and the Federal Market

For the typical enterprise customer, selecting a WAN optimization vendor usually starts with identifying solutions that do a good job accelerating the applications they care about, are scalable, and can be seamlessly deployed within their IT infrastructure.  For the government customer, there is arguably an even more important consideration that goes above and beyond speed, scalability, and simplicity and that is security.  There are 3 key security considerations for government organizations selecting a WAN optimization vendor.

1.  The existing secure infrastructure must not be weakened

Features need to be in place that ensure that as WAN optimization devices and/or software is deployed, additional security risks are not introduced. 

For example, Riverbed offers the ability to SSL encrypt the traffic between Steelhead appliances.  In addition to encrypting the traffic in flight over the WAN, Riverbed also offers the ability to encrypt the chunked data that is stored on the Steelhead appliance for optimization.  Up to 256 bit AES is supported.  The result is that with Riverbed, you get an end-to-end WAN optimization solution that is secure.

2.  You must be able to accelerate secure applications

Federal organizations that have deployed web-based applications that are SSL-encrypted, have encrypted Exchange email, or have applied SMB-signing to their file sharing environment to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks are often forced to make the trade-off between application acceleration for security.  For many WAN optimization vendors, they will simply pass this traffic through unoptimized or worse, will ask the customer to turn off security so they can achieve acceleration.

Riverbed has done a tremendous amount of engineering work to optimize and accelerate these encrypted environments.  With Riverbed, Federal organizations don't have to turn off SSL encryption, Exchange encryption, or SMB signing.  You get to have your cake and eat it too.  Accelerate your applications, while maintaining a secure environment.

3.  Must comply with federal security standards

Large government organizations, civilian agencies, and militaries deploy IT equipment that runs on networks, in data centers, in office buildings, and even in tents or vehicles to support a military endeavors.  This equipment must not only be secure, but it must comply with federal security standards including FIPS, Common Criteria, and JITC.  These federal security standard requirements are often extended to WAN optimization devices as well.

Riverbed has invested a large amount of resources to ensure that our products meet these Federal security standards.

If you are interested in finding out more about how Riverbed has been selected by government agencies around the world to accelerate applications, optimize bandwidth, consolidate IT infrastructure, and optimize disaster recovery, while doing it securely, please drop me an email.

Bob Gilbert
bob@riverbed.com

Riverbed eats it's own dogfood and saves more than $2M

In the latest edition of the Riverbed Connect podcast, Bob Gilbert chats with Tom Bakewell, Riverbed's CIO about how he is using his company's product internally to save more than 2 million dollars.  The case study is also available here for download.

Video: Global Forestry Slashes Costs with Riverbed Steelheads

A global forestry company looked to Riverbed to enable consolidation of 8 Data Centers down to 2 and 280 remote servers consolidated from the branch offices to the data centers. Application performance is 12 to 18 times faster with Riverbed.

Riverbed interview about cloud computing product direction

Bob Gilbert and Eric Wolford discuss cloud computing and Riverbed's recent announcement regarding a product direction for accelerating cloud environments.

The public cloud will be the way to leverage the IT dollar

Thomas Prokop, Manager of Information and Remote Services at Prokop attended Riverbed's Cloud9 event in New York and answered the "what does the cloud mean to you?" question.

The Cloud is the Future

At Riverbed's Cloud9 party during Interop in New york, Michael Vassallo, Sr. Network Administrator at Dancker, Sellew, Douglas, offered his opinion on what the cloud means.

Accelerate 2010 - The Riverbed Performance Summit

We're getting deeper into planning Accelerate 2010 - The Riverbed Performance Summit. Our plans are to include a jam-packed agenda with lots of technical hands-on time and technical architecture discussions.

A few of the topics that we are considering are:

- Designing faster disaster recovery
- Building private cloud infrastructure
- Accelerating virtualization

But, I'd rather hear from YOU in terms of what you'd like to hear and work on during this conference.

What's on the top of your mind? What topics would you like to see on the agenda to ensure that Accelerate 2010 is on your calendar?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!