Riverbed and VMware Collaborate on Networks

Riverbed (RVBD) announced a continued partnership with VMware (VMW), combining WAN Optimization and vCloudConnector solutions to enable cloud service providers to enhance their cloud computing offerings.

Optimized Solutions

These solutions help organizations overcome the challenge of bandwidth constraints, high latency in the network and packet loss – all of which can result in delays. Together they enable companies to realize the benefits of utilizing multiple cloud environments without compromising performance. The Riverbed WAN optimization solution delivers performance gains when moving large VMs across the WAN, while giving the ability to reduce the time to move VMs and costs associated with WAN infrastructure.

"Xtium partners with market leaders like Riverbed and VMware to offer enterprise solutions that enhance the security, compliance, and performance of applications, helping ensure that applications are delivered efficiently and effectively from the cloud to our customer’s doorstep,” said Tim Vogel, chief technology officer at Xtium. “Their solutions enable our customers to move VMs between public-to-public, public and private, and private-to-private clouds, resulting in the greatest flexibility of deployment for the best possible performance.”

As part of this expanded collaboration announced, an extensive test conducted by Riverbed and VMware confirmed interoperability, and resulted in significant performance benefits for onboarding VMs on to a private or public cloud in a Riverbed optimized WAN environment. Testing was performed using VMware vCloud Connector to transfer virtual machine images with and without the Steelhead appliance, in a variety of real-world WAN network conditions. The test result showed that the Steelhead appliance, with WAN-like latency emulated between two VMware vCenter Servers, reduced transfer time by up to 75x.

“Businesses all over the world are turning to virtualization and cloud computing to simplify their IT infrastructure, consolidating, and moving applications to the cloud,” said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. “To support this trend, Riverbed and VMware continue to innovate to provide additional value and benefits for our customers’ existing investments. This latest collaboration with Riverbed optimizes and accelerates the moving of VMs between VMware vSphere and VMware vCloud, improving business flexibility and productivity, and making it faster and easier to gain the benefits of cloud computing.”

Riverbed selected by Quester

Riverbed also announced that Quester, an Austrian retail company, has deployed Riverbed Steelhead appliances across its retail organization. Installing Steelhead appliances has enabled Quester to deliver print, file and email services from its central data center to employees in retail stores, while avoiding a costly server install project, which would have initially required an additional 100 days per year of maintenance and support.