Riverbed and Akamai outlined a “partnership and product vision” on Tuesday to speed up cloud application delivery. The move—more vision than concrete product— should work out for both sides.
Generally speaking, the two companies are planning to speed up application delivery for enterprise and cloud service providers. Product details are sparse at the moment, but the two companies make an interesting pair. Riverbed specializes in wide area network optimization and has been on a tear as a market leader. Akamai historically has focused on content and media delivery, but has branched out to applications and security as it diversifies.
Apurva Dave, vice president of marketing at Riverbed, said the two companies will offer application acceleration for hybrid cloud networks. The idea is to cut the latency on cloud applications and create what Neil Cohen, Akamai’s director of marketing, called a superWAN. “As applications move out from the data center to the public cloud you’re creating a superWAN,” said Cohen. “We’re working to accelerate clouds.
As far as architecture goes, the two companies plan to offer these application acceleration services via existing Riverbed appliances and Akamai Edge servers. Akamai’s technology will be integrated into Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances. Riverbed will put its technology into Akamai’s network.
“It’s a combined stack of optimization,” said Dave. “We’re going to leverage infrastructure already in place to avoid appliance fatigue.”
The partnership will have joint technology and each companies will cross-sell services. Those services, exact pricing and even the products are to be determined. But as far as vision statements go Akamai and Riverbed may be onto something. Product rollouts and joint marketing efforts are slated for the second half of 2011.
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