Riverbed Technology announced an OEM agreement to embed VMware software as the preferred virtualization platform for the Riverbed Services Platform (RSP), a virtualized service delivery solution within Steelhead appliances. With the VMware platform inside Steelhead appliances, enterprises can further consolidate their IT infrastructure and improve manageability by running up to five remote office virtual edge services, without the need for separate dedicated servers. This approach will allow them to improve asset utilization, operational efficiency and business agility, while helping to control IT costs and ensure end-user satisfaction. Services currently available for deployment on the RSP include streaming media, print services, and DNS/DHCP/IPAM.

"There is a strong trend within enterprises toward centralizing servers and consolidating IT infrastructure," said Joe Skorupa, research vice president for Gartner, Inc. "At the same time there are key applications and services that are required in remote locations. Working together, WAN optimization and virtualization technologies allow organizations to move forward with efforts to lower operational and capital costs through IT consolidation, while also ensuring that end-users have access to essential applications and services."

VMware-Based Virtualized Edge Services: Riverbed Services Platform (RSP)
VMware provides Riverbed with the most robust and widely deployed virtualization platform available. More than 120,000 customers, including all of the Fortune 100, have used the VMware platform, which enables them to virtualize their data centers and help ensure business continuity. Riverbed Steelhead appliances accelerate the performance of applications between data centers, remote offices and mobile workers by five to 50 times and in some cases up to 100 times. The award-winning Steelhead products make it possible for companies to consolidate IT and improve backup and replication processes to ensure data integrity, while improving staff productivity and collaboration.

The RSP, which will be virtualized by VMware, is an extensible data services platform that allows customers to deploy best-of-breed edge services that formerly required dedicated servers as virtual appliances. Customers can deploy these virtual appliances directly on Steelhead products to further minimize the hardware infrastructure footprint at the branch office.

"Running the RSP on VMware puts us in a position to offer our customers the most robust and widely-deployed virtualization software available right on our Steelhead platform," said Jerry Kennelly, president and CEO of Riverbed Technology. "Together, VMware and Riverbed will enable server-less remote office computing, which drives IT efficiencies, while providing our customers with high performance computing and productivity for all their knowledge workers, wherever they are."

With VMware as the underlying virtualization platform within RSP, Riverbed will be able to offer up to five virtual appliances on each Steelhead appliance. Riverbed will work with VMware to encourage Riverbed Technology Alliance (RTA) partners to join the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) Program and to validate RSP virtual appliances to help ensure seamless integration with VMware Infrastructure 3, the industry-leading virtualization and management suite. RSP virtual appliances will also be listed on the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace -- the industry's leading online directory of virtual appliances, with more than 900 available for download. The initial third-party applications and services qualified on the new VMware-powered RSP are:

• Secure Computing Secure SnapGear(R) firewall technology
• Infoblox NIOS software for DNS/DHCP/IPAM
• Wowza media server for streaming media
• Print services

In addition, customers will be able to place their own software modules, such as VMDKs, Microsoft Windows, etc., on the RSP.

While RSP adoption will be positioned to gain momentum as a platform for delivering these virtualized edge data services to remote offices, Riverbed will continue to expand the availability of newer applications -- such as application-level sensors, remote management, and other enterprise applications that need a software presence in the remote office -- by distributing them as virtual appliances.

"VMware is excited that Riverbed has based RSP on the VMware virtualization platform," said Shekar Ayyar, vice president of infrastructure alliances at VMware. "The combined solution will allow customers to more easily and efficiently extend their virtualized environments into their branch offices so they can deploy additional services on Riverbed appliances without compromising speed, availability and productivity."

Riverbed Steelhead appliances help enterprises speed up collaboration and move data across VMware environments, while at the same time allowing them to centralize and consolidate IT resources -- all without sacrificing performance.