SAN FRANCISCO – April 7, 2008 – Riverbed Technology (Nasdaq: RVBD), the technology and market leader in wide-area data services (WDS), announced today that the National Satellite and Meteorological Center (NSMC), a scientific research and operational facility affiliated with the China Meteorological Administration, has selected and deployed Riverbed® Steelhead® WDS appliances in its data processing center and at three ground receiving stations at locations across China. The deployment of the Riverbed WDS solution gives NSMC faster access to satellite images and allows NSMC to provide more accurate weather forecasts, without costly bandwidth upgrades.

NSMC is China’s satellite weather monitoring, forecasting, and warning center and plays an essential role in weather forecasting, natural disaster monitoring, and subsequent analysis of the impact of weather events and natural disasters on the national economy. NSMC’s ground system consists of three ground data receiving stations in Guangzhou ,Urumqi and Jamusi, together with a data processing center in Beijing, which processes more than 300 GB of data in one day. Data from ground stations is continuously collected and transmitted to NSMC’s data processing center in Beijing.

Before deploying the Riverbed solution, NSMC’s Beijing data processing center was connected to its other ground stations through a 10MB WAN link. However, as the observation capability of China's weather satellite increased, WAN traffic jumped one-hundred fold within a decade. The rising role of satellites not only in weather forecasting, but also in environment and disaster monitoring, exacts higher requirements from weather satellite remote sensing and ground stations alike, in turn exerting tremendous pressure on NSMC’s wide area network (WAN).

“With Riverbed, we can now fully optimize our WAN bandwidth, which ensures stable and reliable performance, while harnessing the full power of our technology resources through acceleration of our data-rich applications. Working with Riverbed, we can now deliver all weather forecasts faster so that millions of people have more lead time to take action,” said Dr. Lin Manyun, from the Satellite Operations Office of NSMC. “Additionally, in contrast to the spiralling increased costs of expansion in bandwidth, Riverbed Steelhead appliances bring us a higher return on investment, enabling us to meet the demanding time-critical data transfer objectives required for accurate weather forecasting without costly bandwidth upgrades."

“We are pleased that the National Satellite Meteorological Center has selected Riverbed from among the WDS alternatives. The Riverbed WDS solution is the industry’s most comprehensive, supporting multiple protocols, different configurations, and acceleration of the wide variety of applications important to business. The Riverbed solution alleviates multiple bandwidth bottlenecks simultaneously while simplifying data management,” said Thomas Chin, vice president of Riverbed Asia Pacific and Japan. “Today, Riverbed has more than 4,000 customers around the globe. Since our entry into the China market in 2005, we’ve focused on our customers, facilitating collaboration between their offices, and helping them to reduce IT costs. We intend to maintain our commitment to providing WDS solutions that meet the needs of our Chinese users.” 

Dr. Lin commented on the selection of Riverbed Steelhead WDS appliances: “Among the WDS products evaluated, the Steelhead appliances offered the most complete solution, addressing all aspects of WAN performance and accelerated more applications and protocols than the alternatives. The Riverbed product uniquely and dramatically improves the throughput of our scientific applications. Unlike all other products tested, the Steelhead appliances were quick and easy to deploy and required no change to our existing infrastructure. Finally, our user experience was exceptional, with nearly all remote personnel commenting how they now felt they were all operating within the same location."

Steelhead Products
The Riverbed WDS solutions enable organizations of all sizes to overcome a host of severe problems, including poor application performance and insufficient bandwidth at remote sites. By speeding 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, Riverbed's award-winning Steelhead WDS products enable companies to consolidate IT, improve backup and replication processes to ensure data integrity, and improve staff productivity and collaboration. Steelhead products have been deployed in organizations ranging from the world's largest corporations with offices around the globe to small companies with a couple of sites that are just miles apart. To learn more, view Riverbed's demo: www.riverbed.com/pr/jack.

About Riverbed
Riverbed Technology is the technology and market leader in wide-area data services (WDS) solutions for companies worldwide. By enabling application performance over the wide area network (WAN) that is orders of magnitude faster than what users experience today, Riverbed is changing the way people work, and enabling a distributed workforce that can collaborate as if they were local. Additional information about Riverbed (Nasdaq: RVBD) is available at www.riverbed.com.

Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements relating to the expected demand for Riverbed's products and services, statements regarding customer plans for additional Riverbed deployments, and statements relating to Riverbed's ability to meet the needs of distributed organizations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they do not fully materialize or prove incorrect, could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include our ability to react to trends and challenges in our business and the markets in which we operate; our ability to anticipate market needs or develop new or enhanced products to meet those needs; the adoption rate of our products; our ability to establish and maintain successful relationships with our distribution partners; our ability to compete in our industry; fluctuations in demand, sales cycles and prices for our products and services; shortages or price fluctuations in our supply chain; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; general political, economic and market conditions and events; and other risks and uncertainties described more fully in our documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. More information about these and other risks that may impact Riverbed's business are set forth in our Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 15, 2008. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Any future product, feature or related specification that may be referenced in this release are for information purposes only and are not commitments to deliver any technology or enhancement. Riverbed reserves the right to modify future product plans at any time.

Riverbed Technology, Riverbed, Steelhead, RiOS, Interceptor, and the Riverbed logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riverbed Technology, Inc. All other trademarks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

 

 

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Media Contacts:

Kristalle Ward
Riverbed Technology
415-247-8140
kristalle.ward@riverbed.com

Robb Henshaw
Horn Group for Riverbed Technology
415-905-4028
rhenshaw@horngroup.com

 

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