Riverbed announces plans for virtual appliance to accelerate, optimize cloud
Today at Interop, Riverbed Technology is announcing a new push into network acceleration and optimization for the cloud, a virtual appliance, if you will, that is intended to mirror what's being done on the private cloud.
When the servers are yours and they're housed on-site, you can install things to your infrastructure, such as the network optimization appliances that Riverbed has already been offering. Network optimization tools can do a number of things, including re-routing traffic to ensure bandwidth for heavy-duty tasks such as streaming video or using deduplication to transport just changes to a file - instead of the whole file - over the network.
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Riverbed said it has plans to change that in 2010, initially with a virtual appliance called Steelhead for the cloud. In the simplest terms, it's a virtual version of the appliance that resides at the gate of the cloud to manage network performance of applications and files. In a statement, Eric Wolford, a senior VP at Riverbed, said:
Our new technology will change the way enterprises and governments think about storage. No longer will storage have to be tethered locally to the server. This frees IT leaders to locate and move storage assets to sites anywhere in the world, even thousands of miles away, to deliver the most cost-effective and intelligent architectures. This capability allows enterprises to bridge the public cloud and the private cloud - allowing them to take advantage of the best of both worlds