Riverbed Technology has introduced a series of breakthrough, software-defined solutions to accelerate cloud-first and Digital Transformation strategies that are critical for businesses to succeed in today’s digital world. Today at Riverbed Disrupt, a premier customer and influencer event in the Financial District of New York City, executives of Riverbed will unveil these new solutions, and with executives from Microsoft and Palo Alto Networks, outline the disruptive transformations underway in key areas of IT as companies shift to digital services in a cloud-centric world. Digital Transformation is driving disruption across all industries and has moved rapidly to the center of business strategy, made possible by the proliferation of cloud and mobile technologies. Despite these advances, many businesses are still using legacy network architectures, and don’t have a digital-ready network and application infrastructure, putting digital transformation initiatives at risk of stalling. In fact, while IDC expects digital transformation to grow to $2.1T annually by 2019, 60% of digital transformation initiatives will be unable to scale due to lack of a strategic architecture by 2017. Furthermore, the cloud and mobility of end users are creating a hybrid IT model that is complex to manage and costly to maintain, including at branch offices where the majority of employees work and consumers visit and shop.
To address these challenges, Riverbed is delivering new solutions to help companies transition from legacy hardware to a new software-defined and cloud-centric approach to networking, and improve end user experience, allowing enterprises’ digital transformation initiatives to reach their full potential. Riverbed’s new solutions announced today include: SteelConnect 2.0, an application-defined SD-WAN solution that delivers enterprise-scale networking for the cloud-first world and integrated visibility; Riverbed Cloud-Ready Branch, a software-defined, cloud-ready solution that provides a simple, agile and scalable way to deploy and manage all branch office IT needs; SteelCentral SaaS for comprehensive visibility on and off the cloud and new end user experience management across devices with SteelCentral Aternity; and new cloud and virtualized form factors for SteelFusion.
“Riverbed envisioned the need for a dramatic networking and application infrastructure shift several years ago, and has made strategic technology investments, both organically and through acquisition, and collaborated with leading cloud players and service providers in order to evolve our application performance platform to meet the demands of today’s digital enterprise,” said Jerry M. Kennelly, Riverbed Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “Today, we’re delivering a software-defined architecture for a software-defined world, and expanding that infrastructure deeper into the cloud and more broadly across all end users. These solutions will greatly benefit our customers, while significantly expanding the market opportunity for Riverbed and our partners.”
“Riverbed is leading the way in providing a strategic, software-defined architecture to modernize existing networks, performance monitoring, and edge IT infrastructure,” said Bob Parker, IDC. “Only with a holistic approach can enterprises innovate at the required speed, develop and deliver digital services at the required scale, and at the same time keep their core business and mission-critical operations running safely and profitably.”
“Today’s enterprises are continuing to leverage the power of the hybrid cloud to capitalize on increased costs savings, speed and scale, while having the flexibility to move workloads between public and private clouds,” said Yousef Khalidi, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Azure Networking. “Organizations must be agile in order to capitalize on the cloud and digital transformation, and Riverbed continues to innovate by providing application-defined and software-defined solutions that enable intelligent networking for the cloud era.”
Riverbed Introduces Software-Defined Solutions for Digital Transformation
The new solutions Riverbed announced today extend the Riverbed Application Performance Platform™, and deliver the agility, visibility, and performance businesses need to be successful in a cloud and digital world. By leveraging the Platform, organizations can deliver apps, data, and services from any public, private, or hybrid cloud across any network to any end-point.
· Riverbed® SteelConnect™ 2.0 – SteelConnect is an application-defined SD-WAN solution for the cloud era. SteelConnect was developed to disrupt the ‘legacy’ network routing market, with the ability to replace thousands of manually configured routers with virtual network design based on zero-touch provisioning and easy change management. With SteelConnect, organizations can create a single, software-defined networking spanning LANs, WANs, and the cloud (such as AWS and Microsoft Azure) with centralized management, a cloud-centric workflow, automatic application orchestration, and integrated security. Following a successful early access release in April, SteelConnect 2.0 offers richer integration with Riverbed SteelHead WAN optimization and full SteelCentral visibility, dynamic routing, and greater scale for large enterprise deployments for organizations of all sizes.
· Riverbed® Cloud-Ready Branch™ – Riverbed’s Cloud-Ready Branch transforms branch office IT with a software-defined, cloud-ready solution that is built on the Riverbed Application Performance Platform and provides a simple, agile and scalable way to deploy and manage all branch office IT needs. The solution allows customers to select the services they need on a branch-by-branch basis, including SD-WAN with cloud connectivity and branch networking, integrated visibility across networks and applications, integrated WAN optimization, branch data services, and an extensible services platform.
· Riverbed® SteelCentral™ – SteelCentral is the command center for application performance, providing comprehensive performance monitoring and management across public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud enterprise environments. This new SteelCentral release delivers greater integration with Riverbed SteelConnect solution, extends monitoring to any device for end user experience monitoring through the recent acquisition of Aternity, and introduces SteelCentral SaaS for complete visibility in or outside the cloud.
· Riverbed® SteelFusion™ – SteelFusion, the leading software-defined solution, is now available in two new form factors to give customers greater choice in how they transform distributed infrastructure into a Software-Defined Edge that is agile, secure, and cost-effective. SteelFusion is available to deploy on IBM Cloud, an IaaS cloud platform or in a virtual form factor with Virtual SteelFusion Edge allowing customers to centralize edge IT in their own data center, in the cloud, or across a hybrid combination.
