San Francisco, CA — October 22, 2007 — Riverbed Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: RVBD), the performance leader in wide-area data services (WDS), announced today version 4.1 of its award-winning Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS™) and the upcoming availability of a new Steelhead® appliance, model 6120. The enhancements in RiOS 4.1 and the new Steelhead appliance model 6120 build on Riverbed's work with over 2,500 customers to solve the application performance and IT control dilemma that CIOs face as they confront the competing demands of an increasingly distributed workforce and the need to protect and control data. With this release, Riverbed® extends its technology and product lead, both in the depth and breadth of protocol optimizations, as well as in enterprise scalability and security.

As part of this release, Riverbed is delivering application-specific optimization for large-scale data transfers, that includes both hardware and software components. Riverbed has enhanced its RiOS software with disaster recovery intelligence and is introducing a new Steelhead appliance model 6120, which is optimized for disaster recovery. In addition, Riverbed has introduced optimizations for Oracle11i applications, furthering its leadership in providing customers with the best performance for the applications important to their businesses. Lastly, for organizations that require high levels of security or face compliance requirements, RiOS 4.1 provides encryption capability for the data stored on disk in Steelhead appliances.

"This release from Riverbed brings together functionality that will help organizations both better plan for and respond in the event of a disaster," said Arun Taneja, principal analyst at the Taneja Group. "The layering of application-specific optimizations for disaster recovery with hardware optimizations designed for heavy workloads is a breakthrough in WDS."

"I've spoken with customers of Riverbed who utilize their Steelhead appliances for disaster recovery," Taneja continued. "One of those customers, a medical device manufacturer with over 10,000 employees, reports that before Riverbed, the company could not replicate incremental backup to their disaster recovery site in the time available and they were unable to support DR. After installing Riverbed's Steelhead appliances, the data transfer time was improved by 12X. Today, the company has a solid DR strategy and process in place that is made possible by Riverbed."

Disasters can take a heavy toll as business is disrupted. According to research by the Fibre Channel Industry Association, the potential average cost of an hour of downtime for mainstream industries ranges from nearly $8 million for a brokerage company and $2.8 million for credit card processing organizations and energy companies to $1.6 million for manufacturing. In an effort to reduce both the length and cost of downtime should a disaster occur, organizations are building infrastructure to reduce both their recovery time and recovery point objectives. This approach allows them to compress backup windows, increase the frequency of backups and, when necessary, restore their data quickly and efficiently.

Disaster Recovery Acceleration
Building on Riverbed's patented technologies and existing disaster recovery capabilities, RiOS 4.1 now combines advanced optimization with a new set of behavioral traffic recognition features to enable adaptive acceleration based on the size and type of the data to be transferred. This dynamically-enabled acceleration is an industry first that automatically recognizes disaster recovery operations, such as data replication and backup jobs, to achieve even faster performance for large-scale data transfers.

Riverbed's new Steelhead appliance model 6120 is designed for data-center-to-data-center transfers, while retaining the capability to support acceleration for branch offices and mobile workers. The Steelhead appliance model 6120 has a raw capacity of seven terabytes and a data store that is over three terabytes in size, doubling the capacity of Riverbed's currently available largest Steelhead appliance model.

RiOS 4.1 and the Steelhead appliance 6120 working together offer unique benefits for disaster recovery operations. First, RiOS 4.1 performs more efficient reads of data on disk for replication workloads. Riverbed is able to do this because 4.1 recognizes replication workloads and enhances existing optimizations for data placement on disk. Second, in response to replication workloads, Riverbed offers a replication-specific replacement algorithm for patterns on disk. And, lastly, alternative disk-based products often hit a cliff when overwhelmed with data-intensive workloads, creating a bottleneck and stalling replication processes. Riverbed intelligently "shock absorbs" these extreme workloads, resulting in much better performance and better protection of data.

"With the combination of the new disaster recovery functionality in RiOS 4.1 and the processing and storage capacity of the Steelhead appliance model 6120, we are able to deliver increased scalability for disaster recovery operations," said Eric Wolford, senior vice president, marketing and business development at Riverbed. "Enterprises that replicate very large data loads across distance require solutions that deliver in both software and hardware. When the data fire hose is turned on, RiOS 4.1 and the Steelhead appliance model 6120 working together are able to absorb the load, identify the traffic type and accelerate its transfer over the WAN–without becoming a bottleneck."

"Customers in our RiOS 4.1 beta program have seen significant disaster recovery performance improvements," continued Wolford. "One of those companies, a major medical center, replicates 3 terabytes over a 20 MB circuit every day between regional hubs in the Midwestern United States using NetApp's SnapMirror. Prior to installing Riverbed's Steelhead appliances, replication of the file took over 24 hours. With Steelhead appliances installed, the time to replicate improved by 10X."

Oracle 11i Optimization
RiOS 4.1 now applies application-specific protocol optimization to Oracle Forms traffic, found throughout the Oracle E-Business application suite. By applying new acceleration techniques to the Oracle JInitiator Web browser plug-in, RiOS can accelerate Oracle 11i applications that are built using Forms.

BigBand Networks, Inc. provides broadband service providers with innovative network solutions designed to make it easier to move, manage and monetize video. The company is based in Redwood City, California, with offices worldwide. BigBand Networks has a global customer base of more than 100 cable operators and telephone companies spanning North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. In the U.S. alone, the company's customers include six of the top ten service providers.

BigBand Networks recently tested the Oracle 11i functionality in RiOS 4.1. When asked to comment on the results, Eugene Alfaro, director of IT Services at BigBand Networks, said, "With Riverbed, we saw a 90% data reduction in our Oracle 11i traffic. We also used the Steelhead's QoS capabilities to improve performance to meet the expectations of our Oracle users in our remote sites. This aligns with our strategy to leverage a single ERP and MRP to allow our global business units to seamlessly collaborate on information without the deterrence of slow application response times. It also supports our continued approach to centralize application systems to minimize infrastructure support costs."

End-to-End Security
The security functionality in RiOS 4.1 builds on Riverbed's extensive work in building solutions that ensure the security and integrity of enterprise data. With RiOS 4.1, Riverbed provides organizations with stringent security requirements an encryption capability for the data stored on disk in Steelhead appliances. Encryption standards supported include AES 128, 192, and 256-bit.

This combination of security features gives Riverbed customers the industry's only WDS solution that preserves end-to-end security. The encrypt-to-disk functionality in RiOS 4.1 builds on Riverbed's ability to accelerate SSL across the WAN without compromising the security trust model, and its existing support for site-to-site VPNs and site-to-site IPSEC option.

"With the release of RiOS 4.1, Riverbed is delivering an advanced, comprehensive set of secure application acceleration capabilities," said Jon Olstik, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "Data is protected not only over the WAN, but it is also encrypted when it is resident as byte-level data sequences in the Steelhead appliances. This depth of security ensures that accelerated application data remains secure end-to-end as it is delivered from data centers to end users."

Availability and Pricing
RiOS 4.1 is generally available now at no additional cost to licensees with a current maintenance and support contract, subject to US export controls. The Steelhead appliance model 6120 will be generally available on November 15, 2007. The US list price is $119,995.

Steelhead Products
Riverbed's 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 performance 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.

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:

Kim Kapustka
(415) 344-4476
kim@riverbed.com

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

 

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