BT to Offer Riverbed as Service to Accelerate Cloud Applications

BT announced that "..as part of its Cloud of Clouds vision it will deploy virtual Riverbed SteelHead application acceleration technology in the core of its global network, providing superior application performance for customers accessing BT’s own cloud services as well as other leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings. 

It is the first time Riverbed technology has been deployed into the core of a global telecoms network"
  
Related link "Gartner's WAN Optimization Report", positioning Riverbed as a leader in WAN Optimization - here.

"BT and Riverbed are embedding their services at global business hubs in Europe, North America and Asia in locations where BT has direct links to leading cloud providers and high-capacity internet breakout. 

The service will be available globally from early 2016 and accessible through BT’s IP Connect VPN from 198 countries and territories. A series of pilots of the new capability showed substantial network performance improvements for SaaS applications such as the Microsoft Office 365 productivity suite.

In addition to application acceleration and network bandwidth optimization, customers using the new service also gain increased control over their applications, better end-to-end visibility into performance, and significantly improved reliability and security compared to delivering applications over the internet". 

See "Customers to benefit from improved performance when connecting to applications in the cloud" - here.

Major Wireshark Release Announced

Riverbed Technology "sponsor of Wireshark® – the world’s most popular open source network and protocol analysis tool ongoing development project" announced "a major Wireshark release that’s been nearly two years in the making .. Wireshark 2.0 now uses a new application framework to deliver a significantly better user experience on all platforms, particularly Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.

Key Wireshark 2.0 New Features:

• Language support: Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish
• Configurable conversation types
• VoIP player improvements
• New wireless toolbar
• Intelligent scrollbar
• Faster column display
• Filterable expert items
• More conversation filter options
• SSL dissector improvements
• Streamlined menu items
• IO graph, TCP stream graphs, throughput graph, window scaling graph improvements
• IPv6 statistics and address compression
• First column shows Related Packets and Conversation Spans
• Windows stick around for easy comparison of graphs and statistics between captures
• Background dissection makes sorting and other features faster
• Streamlined menu items consolidate different capture and interface dialogs

See "Riverbed Announces Wireshark 2.0" - here.

[Gartner] Riverbed & Silver Peak are the WAN Optimization Leaders

Riverbed shared with us Gartner's Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimization - from a report by Joe Skorupa [pictured], VP Distinguished Analyst and Bjarne Munch, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner.

"Most networks carry a variety of traffic types of differing characteristics and importance. Many organizations are striving to manage this traffic to optimize the response times of critical applications and reduce costs, given that bandwidth continues to represent a significant proportion of operating expenditure for wide-area data networks. But the cost of bandwidth isn't the only consideration — as resources are increasingly centralized, minimizing the effect of latency on application response times is becoming a critical requirement. In addition, virtualization and new application environments, such as cloud computing and Web services as well as data replication, can put an unexpected strain on the WAN"

"The development of the application acceleration market has been driven by customer demand for highly integrated solutions that employ a wide range of techniques to optimize network traffic and that offer scalability and fault tolerance. Vendors in this space initially addressed either the traffic shaping/QoS market or the compression/caching market. These two segments have now largely merged, with most products supporting both sets of capabilities. Increasingly, the combination of application visibility/QoS and latency mitigation is required to achieve acceptable application performance. We therefore see a need for application identification/control and both generic and application-specific optimizations to mitigate the impact of network latency on remote application performance"
  

See: "Riverbed Again Recognized As A “Leader” In Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimization–Seven Years Running" - here

[Infonetics]: Wan Optimization Market Declining; Riverbed Dominates

A recent report by Cliff Grossner, Ph.D., directing analyst for data center and cloud, Infonetics Research, finds that "Though WAN optimization revenue increased 3% sequentially in 3Q13, to $210 million, it remains on an overall downhill course, with revenue falling 9% year-over-year this quarter. Future WAN optimization revenue will increasingly come from the replacement of existing gear rather than adoption by new customers or sites. As usual, Riverbed dominates the WAN optimization market, Cisco is firmly in 2nd place, and Blue Coat rounds out the top 3". 

See "Virtual solutions open door for growth in application delivery controller market" - here.

NI Deployments [192]: BT Uses Riverbed for Global Applications-aware Networking Services

Riverbed Technology introduced ".. two new virtual editions to the Riverbed® Cascade® product family that enable managed service providers (MSPs) to deliver application-aware network performance management (NPM) as a service to their small-to-medium-sized and enterprise customers. The new Cascade Profiler Virtual Edition and Cascade Gateway Virtual Edition plus the existing Cascade Shark Virtual Edition provide a completely virtualized NPM solution portfolio that allows MSPs to deliver continued value in a virtualized world with the next-generation of performance management .. The new virtual edition products are expected to be generally available in Q4 2012"

"In addition to providing the visibility needed for monitoring and troubleshooting network and application performance, Cascade products provide customers the critical information they need for strategic IT decision making and planning across projects, including data center consolidation, virtualization, and WAN optimization"

Keith Langridge, VP, Network Services at BT Global Services said : "BT has always been at the forefront of delivering application performance management to help organizations succeed in a complex, global environment. By integrating the latest application-aware network monitoring techniques from Riverbed Cascade products into our established BT Connect Acceleration service, we can help customers get the most out of their networks"

See "Riverbed Delivers Network and Application Performance Monitoring to Managed Service Providers" - here.

Riverbed OEMs Vineyard's DPI Engine

  

Vineyard Networks announced that Riverbed Technology ".. has licensed Vineyard’s Network Application Visibility Library (NAVL) deep packet inspection (DPI) engine, designed to provide Riverbed® customers with comprehensive application classification technology to protect critical applications while containing recreational applications"

According to Vineyard, its DPI software is part of the recent enhancements to Riverbed's Steelhead (RiOS release 8.0) and the enhanced Layer 4-7 app classification capabilities in it. Riverbed now claims the ".. ability to scale automatic identification and prioritization to more than 600 applications" (see "Riverbed Introduces Software Enhancements and New High Performance Hardware Models to Steelhead Product Family" - here)

Vineyard partners' page (here) shows additional vendors as "powered by Vineyard" including BlueCoat.

"Integrating NAVL with market-leading Riverbed wide area network (WAN) optimization solutions increases the accuracy and efficiency of the real-time network traffic classification. The licensed technology helps identify all types of applications, even hard to detect applications and custom applications, to protect critical applications like web, voice, and video and contain recreational application traffic".

See "Vineyard Networks Announces Strategic Relationship with Riverbed to Provide Powerful Layer-7 Application Identification Technology" - here.

Juniper Integrates Riverbed Technology for Mobile Acceleration

Juniper Networks announced a new technology partnership with Riverbed ".. in wide area network (WAN) optimization, application delivery and mobility to deliver market-leading technologies for enterprises looking to increase the efficiency of their IT infrastructures and securely deliver better performance of applications across devices, networks and clouds".

  

Among other things "Riverbed and Juniper will begin a joint effort to integrate Riverbed's Steelhead® Mobile technology into the Juniper Networks® Junos® Pulse client to provide a mobile acceleration solution for mobile phones and tablets". 

"With Steelhead® Mobile client software, companies of any size can give mobile workers LAN-like access to corporate files and applications no matter where they are in the world. Steelhead Mobile overcomes the challenges that plague mobile workers, including variable locations, inconsistent links, and high-latency environments, and it does so seamlessly and transparently. The result? Higher productivity and more efficient operations, access, and performance anywhere"

See "Juniper Networks and Riverbed announce technology partnership to enable more secure, efficient delivery of applications across devices, networks and clouds" - here.

Reality Check - LTE and QoE

 
Is Riverbed looking at the MNOs market?

An interesting article @gigaom by Ed Robinson (pictured), General Manager, Web Content Optimization at Riverbed Technology, explains why other technologies may contribute more to the subscriber QoE than migration to LTE.
 
"One major difference between 4G and 3G is that a 4G network is all IP-based, so it passes information between phone and carrier exactly the same way as a Web browser communicates with the Internet. 4G also boasts an increase in theoretical maximum throughput from 14.4 Mbps (mega bits per second) to 100 Mbps or more. But theoretical maximums are like the theoretical miles-per-gallon on a new car. They’re nothing like what you experience day to day.
 
In the real world, a 4G network delivers maybe three to five Mbps, and 3G networks two to three Mbps. This is due to distance from the cell tower, interference from walls and objects, and people moving while using their device — real world things" 

"Carriers have been fine-tuning their 3G networks to account for these real-world variables for years. Because 4G is newer, it hasn’t had anywhere near this much tuning yet".

"..When it comes to Web performance, you need to invest in the areas that have the highest likelihood for significant returns. The networks are already fast enough. We need to find other areas that promise more return on performance investments. By using techniques such as compression, HTTP request merging and dynamic layout effects to optimize content, we can make vast improvements in real-world speeds and load times. The opportunity in this area of acceleration can return as much as 40 to 50 percent improvements in load times".

See also "BTM Survey 2012: How MNOs will Manage Data Congestion?" - here.

See "Think 4G is 10 times faster? Think again" - here.

Riverbed Plans to Convert Customers of Acquired Expand

Just before year end I quoted Globes about the acquisition of Expand Networks by Riverbed (see "Riverbed to Buy Expand for $10M" - here).

Riverbed now confirms that - " it has purchased certain assets of Expand Networks, including its intellectual property, out of liquidation in Israel. Riverbed did not purchase the corporate entity of Expand Networks and has not assumed any of Expand’s liabilities, obligations or contracts". 

Riverbed also adds some more details (here) and states that it will not continue to sell Expand products -".. customers of Expand Networks are encouraged to contact Riverbed Sales for alternative solutions".

See "Riverbed Purchases Assets of Expand Networks" - here. 

[Globes]: Riverbed to Buy Expand for $10M

   

Shmulik Shelach reports to Globes that "Sources inform ''Globes'' that Riverbed is about to acquire Expand Networks for $10 million, three months after the company was put in receivership. The sale is due to be closed next week, after Expand special administrator Adv. Paz Rimer submits the deal to the Haifa District Court for approval .. This is the second time that Riverbed has considered acquiring Expand Networks. In late 2009, there were talks to acquire it for $30 million, but nothing came of them. If the court approves the sale, this will be Riverbed's first acquisition in Israel". 

Background - "Optimization Vendor Expand Goes into Urgent Assets Sale" - here.

See "Riverbed to acquire Expand Networks for $10m" - here.

[Calcalist] Riverbed and HP bid for Radware

 

Calcalist continues to provide hot M&A news (here) - today it is about Radware, a vendor of integrated application delivery and application security.

The site reported earlier today (here, Hebrew) that Riverbed has offered to acquire the company for $47/share, which represents a fully-diluted valuation of $1.03B. Previously, it was published that HP offered $45/share.

Radware (NASDAQ:RDWR) closed at $32.8 last week. The previous jump (see the chart below) was after the rumors of HP and IBM bidding for Radware (here). Calcalist reports that Radware's CEO, Roy Zisapel (picture), met last week with both Riverbed and HP and that Radware is asking for $53/share.

Radware already has an alliance with Riverbed - "the combination of Riverbed Technology's Steelhead appliance and Radware's LinkProof® switch enables secure branch office continuity while reducing costs" (here)

Riverbed to Manage Traffic on Verizon's Managed WAN

   
In my "Broadband Traffic Management" blog, I usually cover consumer-generated traffic - i.e. services and applications we all know from our personal use, either over fixed or mobile networks.

Nevertheless, there is a huge market out there, with a very similar core technology, which targets the operator's business customers - enterprises that either inter-connect their branches and data centers or provide Internet access to their corporate users (or both).

See an earlier post on this subject "Reliance Globalcom Uses DPI for App-Aware Services" - here.

Today we get an announcement from the leader in enterprise Wan Optimization market - Riverbed.  TheStreet reports (here) that "Networking specialist Riverbed(RVBD) is teaming up with Verizon(VZ) as part of a deal to boost traffic across corporate networks.". This is not new for Verizon, as it "already works with Cisco(CSCO) and Juniper(JNPR) to support its Managed WAN Optimization Services, but will now add Riverbed to this mix" - but certainly a great opportunity to Riverbed.

TheStreet also mentions that "ATT(T), BT(BT) and Orange Business Services were present at the virtual Steelhead launch, and Riverbed says that it is working with all three companies around managed services.". Orange Business Services is also using one of Riverbed's  comptitors - Ipanema Technologies - see  "App Performance Services from Vanco and Orange Business Services"  here.