Riverbed's RiOS 5.0 Update Adds Performance, Virtualization and Visibility Features

Riverbed Technology released version 5.0 of its Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS), enabling its Steelhead product line to provide application-level protocol optimization for Microsoft Exchange 2007. The upgrade also adds new scale, simplicity and security features, including the new RiOS Services Platform (RSP) for delivering virtualized edge services without the need to deploy additional branch office servers.



In the area of application-level acceleration, RiOS 5.0 adds to the existing HTTP and HTTPS acceleration capabilities by further improving the performance of enterprise Web applications, including SAP NetWeaver, Oracle, PeopleSoft/JD Edwards, Microsoft and Siebel CRM, SharePoint, and Outlook Web Access (OWA). The gains are achieved by further reducing the chattiness and delay often associated with enterprise Web-based applications. Riverbed said users of RiOS 5.0 will see additional performance improvements of up to 10X for their Web applications.


RiOS 5.0 also delivers acceleration capabilities for Oracle 11i applications running in HTTP mode. The improvements target the Oracle E-Business suite of applications, particularly Oracle forms traffic and reporting, as well as other application operations. Riverbed is the only vendor that provides application-level optimization for Oracle 11i.


Riverbed said its RiOS Services Platform (RSP) enables the delivery of virtualized edge services without the need to deploy additional physical servers at remote or branch offices. The RSP allows businesses to deploy best-of-breed services from their choice of vendors on Steelhead appliances in a self-contained partition to minimize the hardware infrastructure footprint at the branch office. In a typical RSP deployment, IT infrastructure at the remote site is simplified to include the RSP and a router.


Riverbed said it also now provides flexibility for organizations that want to enable end-to-end transparency of WAN traffic by IP address and port or by port only. Steelhead appliances enable full IP or port-only address visibility on the WAN for optimized connections in addition to their default correct addressing mode.


In RiOS 5.0, Riverbed is adding to its QoS classification of traffic based on both bandwidth and priority with the launch of hierarchical QoS. Hierarchical QoS allows customers to assign different QoS specifications on a per site basis in addition to setting application or protocol priorities. Riverbed's QoS capability not only provides granularity, but also simplified management for complex environments.http://www.riverbed.com