Riverbed Optimization System RiOS 7.0 Released - Accelerates the Delivery of Native Video, UDP and IPv6, and Extends Support for VDI

December 9, 2011

Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS) broadens the company’s support for key enterprise applications and extend its leadership in delivering speed, scale, simplicity and security to the globally connected enterprise. With RiOS 7.0, Riverbed has expanded its already broad set of optimizations to include native support for hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) video, User Datagram Protocol (UDP), and IPv6, and has extended its existing optimizations for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Quality of Service (QoS), scale and security enhancements also provide organizations with greater control over business-critical applications. This release reinforces the Riverbed commitment to optimize all types of applications that enterprises care about, and gives customers a performance platform that is designed for the applications of both today and tomorrow.

In addition, in RiOS 7.0 Riverbed has integrated Cascade Shark functionality into the Steelhead appliance to deliver on-demand packet capture and analysis, allowing customers to leverage their Steelhead appliance for branch monitoring and troubleshooting. Riverbed is the only vendor to provide this level of integration between wide area network (WAN) optimization and a network performance management (NPM) solution.

“The increasing adoption of technologies such as live video, UDP and IPv6 are helping change the way organizations do business,” said Lucinda (Cindy) Borovick, research vice president for the enterprise communications and data center networks services at IDC. “With this release, Riverbed is raising the bar even further by adding to its already robust list of optimizations for its Steelhead appliance by tackling these technologies that are often times bandwidth-intensive. By also adding embedded Cascade Shark functionality into the Steelhead appliance and QoS enhancements, customers have the tools to troubleshoot performance problems quickly and prioritize applications that are critical to business success.”

“Riverbed is a market leader because its product development is driven by customer needs,” said Miles Kelly, senior director of product marketing at Riverbed. “New support for UDP and IPv6 underscore our ongoing focus on expanding capabilities in RiOS to align with the new IT initiatives our customers undertake, based directly on our conversations with them. In addition, as the company with the broadest set of optimizations for the applications important to enterprises, we will continue to address dynamic applications and specific use cases such as disaster recovery, VDI and unified communications and collaboration (UCC).”

Acceleration of End-to-End Video Solutions
With the enhancements in RiOS 7.0, Riverbed extends its capabilities to provide organizations with joint solutions for complete, end-to-end video optimization for live and on-demand content. Riverbed now offers optimization for delivery of video content with native stream splitting capabilities over HTTP. With stream splitting technology, also known as application layer multicasting, a single video stream can serve a large number of viewers in a particular location, enabling video scalability for live video, providing high-quality viewing and freeing more bandwidth across the WAN for other applications. For on-demand streaming, customers can combine data streamlining to store on-demand videos in branch locations, QoS to prioritize bandwidth utilization, and prepositioning to proactively improve users’ video experience. These live and on-demand optimization capabilities also leverage current partnerships with leading video content management solutions providers such as Polycom, Adobe, Qumu and MediaPlatform. With these integrated solutions, organizations can not only enhance video production and content management but also delivery and distribution.

Optimizations for Adobe Video Solutions
Riverbed now offers native stream splitting for Adobe Flash over HTTP. With the new stream splitting capability, organizations using Adobe Flash Media now have a powerful solution to deliver multimedia communication and collaboration solutions to remote employees for live broadcasts as well as videos on demand. Riverbed’s video optimization capabilities will enable scalable and efficient delivery for CEO/CxO broadcasts, training and compliance videos, employee-generated video content, and more.

Another Industry First for Riverbed – Live Video Stream Splitting for Microsoft Silverlight Riverbed also is the first to offer stream splitting for Microsoft Silverlight. Microsoft Silverlight is a powerful tool for creating and delivering rich Internet business applications and premium media experiences on the Web. With the new stream splitting technology, organizations using Microsoft Silverlight can now use more video with freedom for the purposes of training and internal communications, effectively without increasing bandwidth capacity or negatively impacting the performance of other applications.

UDP for Replication Solutions and IPv6
With the release of RiOS 7.0, organizations now have the flexibility to optimize applications that run on both TCP/IP and UDP, including replication solutions. These applications can consume substantial bandwidth, making connectionless, packet-by-packet optimization a necessity. In addition, as IPv6 is adopted, RiOS 7.0 ensures organizations can take advantage of bandwidth optimization for UDP traffic and TCP over IPv6.

Riverbed Expands Acceleration and Control for Broadest Range of Virtual Desktop Environments As many organizations are turning to desktop virtualization to centralize critical data and deliver IT resources more efficiently, Riverbed delivers solutions to help overcome WAN constraints such as latency, limited bandwidth, and an inability to prioritize interactive traffic that cause virtual desktop performance to slow down. The Riverbed Steelhead product family helps organizations get the most out of their virtual desktop deployments by optimizing traffic for the broadest range of solutions. Currently Riverbed customers can overcome the performance barriers to delivering desktop virtualization for organizations utilizing Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop, VMware View, and Microsoft RDP and RemoteFX. To further enable organizations to adopt a virtual desktop infrastructure and enhance end-user productivity, Riverbed is delivering new capabilities in RiOS 7.0 with optimization for ICA (independent computing architecture) over secure socket layer (SSL). Additionally, a new client drive mapping feature enables organizations to optimize content accessed directly from a thin client, including thumb drives.

More Understanding and Control to Address Business Priorities

On Demand Packet Capture and Analysis for Branch Troubleshooting
As organizations deploy new applications, including rich media content, in branch offices, end users come to expect a LAN-like experience. Therefore, IT administrators need to be able to pinpoint and resolve application performance problems quickly so that end users in the branch office aren’t negatively impacted. The Riverbed Cascade family of application-aware NPM solutions offers an elegant and simple design that deploys easily in complex networks and provides true integration with the Steelhead product family. With RiOS 7.0, Riverbed has extended that integration, allowing customers with Cascade Pilot to leverage Steelhead appliances in branch offices for on-demand packet capture and remote analysis without having to transfer huge packet capture files over the network. Now, IT administrators can detect and respond to application performance problems without expanding their hardware footprint.

“The integration of on-demand packet capture capabilities in RiOS 7.0 enables our organization to get more out of our investment in Steelhead appliances,” said Tim Kokes, systems engineer at Rudolph Technologies, a leading provider of process characterization equipment and software for wafer fabs and advanced packaging facilities. “We can now respond faster to performance issues at our remote sites without having to expand our hardware footprint, which also translates to secondary benefits including cost savings and fewer nodes to manage across our network. Also, some of the new optimizations in RiOS 7.0 provided us with improved performance for critical applications such as Microsoft Outlook. The end result is more productive employees, improved network uptime, and fewer bandwidth constraints, which leaves more room for other applications like VoIP, so we no longer experience dropped calls.”

Security

For security-conscious organizations, RiOS 7.0 expands optimization capabilities to include authenticated and encrypted traffic, specifically:

• Encrypted Lotus Notes – Organizations that have embraced Lotus Notes can now accelerate Encrypted Lotus Notes traffic.
• Microsoft Online Services Optimization – Riverbed can now deliver increased performance for messaging and collaboration solutions, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Office Live.
• End-to-End Kerberos Authentication Support – Riverbed can now optimize applications that utilize the Kerberos authentication standard, which is used by Microsoft applications and platforms including Active Directory and Windows Server.

Skipware Integration
Riverbed’s Skipware software now integrates directly with RiOS 7.0. Skipware is based on the proprietary commercial implementation of the Space Communications Protocol Standard (SCPS), which has become the de facto standard for US Department of Defense satellite networking environments. Skipware enables organizations to overcome severe performance degradation caused by weather and other interference that jeopardizes mission-critical communications. Previously, Skipware was available only as a package on the Riverbed Services Platform (RSP).

Availability: RiOS 7.0 is expected to be generally available in Q4 2011.