Riverbed Cloud Steelhead

The solution for optimization of WAN networks created especially for work in public cloud environments. Riverbed Cloud Steelhead provides to the enterprises and the state organizations the high performance of network infrastructure at the expense of the solution developed especially for use in public cloud infrastructure. Cloud Steelhead differs in simplicity of installation and is scaled in a cloud environment of service provider to accelerate data migration in a public cloud and to improve performance of the applications placed in a public cloud. Having presented the solution Cloud Steelhead, the Riverbed company expands the strategy of "universal acceleration" of access to corporate data and applications and proposes solutions for acceleration of performance in private, public and hybrid cloud environments.

Public cloud environment provides the flexible and effective platform for placement of IT resources. The organizations pay attention to possibilities of cloud infrastructure already today to use computing power with payment after delivery of use (pay-as-you-go compute), complex tools for joint work with partners and also to use it for the purposes of testing and development. However, to take advantage of public cloud infrastructure, today the enterprises should make concessions and to select between highly effective and flexible service from service providers of cloud computing and the restrictions of performance characteristic of modern applications and networks. Now, removing performance concerns of applications and networks, the solution Cloud Steelhead accelerates process of data migration and applications in public cloud infrastructure and accelerates access to these data and applications practically from any point.

The solution Cloud Steelhead compatible to Steelhead devices, the virtual devices Virtual Steelhead and the mobile client of Steelhead does not require any changes in the existing IT architecture of the organization and provides following features for complex integration into cloud infrastructure:

• Transparent interception of traffic in a cloud (Transparent cloud interception). With the advent of the new agent of detection of "Steelhead Discovery Agent" the Riverbed company considerably simplified process of optimization of WAN in cloud environments. Thanks to this new approach of an optimization appliance of WAN can be used in the high-automated virtualized environments where the physical location of the server of the customer can change at any time. With the advent of new transparent interception of traffic to servers to which WAN optimization extends is automatically redirected by connections to the corresponding copy of Cloud Steelhead, even when changing the IP address or subnet of the server.
• Corresponding pricing model. The price model based on a subscription fee allows to apply economy of cloud computing to the systems of optimization of WAN. Riverbed offers a subscription for the software from 6 months that allows the customers using the Cloud Steelhead device to carry expenses on optimization of WAN on operating expenses, but not on capital costs.
• Simple portal management system. The new portal "Riverbed Cloud Portal" simplifies implementation, management, licensing and instant updating of copies of Cloud Steelhead. For only three clicks customers can set a new copy of Cloud Steelhead and, using the intuitive interface, to change its capacity, location and other parameters.
• Simple cloning. Administrators can use the existing settings and the Cloud Steelhead configurations for instant creation of new copies of Cloud Steelhead online.

Originally the solution Cloud Steelhead 1.0 will be integrated with Amazon EC2 and Virtual Private Cloud services (Amazon of VPC).

The enterprises moving the applications and data to a public cloud environment face the same difficulties, as the organizations consolidating the IT infrastructure based on data processing centers and private cloud environments: the restrictions connected with cross-network delays and capacity of networks considerably reduce overall performance. Testing of Riverbed showed that because of the restrictions imposed by network, use of public cloud infrastructure for data storage and ensuring access to them can lead to twentyfold decline in production in comparison with local data storage. For the users who got used to performance improvement of their private cloud environments at the expense of Riverbed Steelhead devices, the solution Cloud Steelhead is capable to provide similar performance level in public cloud environments. The customers testing Cloud Steelhead noted thirtyfold performance improvement of the applications.

It is expected that the solution Riverbed Cloud Steelhead will be available in the 4th quarter 2010.