Riverbed SteelCentral

Riverbed SteelCentral (earlier: OPNET, Cascade, NEOP) - the complete solution for performance control and centralized operation.

The product combines management tools work of certain users, performance of applications and networks. SteelCentral provides the transparency of infrastructure necessary for identification and correction of problems before users face them.

Infographics of opportunities of representation of SteelCentral of data on networks and components (2014)

SteelCentral reduces time and efforts which are required for development, implementation and maintenance of effective operation of applications. The centralized and universal solution is applied by commands of operation and development in modern fast cycles of operation of applications to achievement of maximum efficiency, speed of work and performance in the world of network applications.

SteelCentral works as the central solution Riverbed Application Performance Platform, platforms of application performance management which provides to Chief information officers unobstructed sight of operation of applications and also a possibility of its optimization and control in any point of the organization and the corresponding IT environment.

2018: Complex approach to monitoring of performance

On October 25, 2018 the Riverbed company presented the updated solution for management of digital experience of Riverbed SteelCentral. Product update changes idea of performance management of a cloud computing architecture and improves visibility of cloud applicaions and networks using implementation of additional opportunities of APM (application performance management) and NPM (performance management of networks). The release of Riverbed represents complex approach to monitoring of performance which will allow the companies to monitor digital experience for each application in any cloud environment, the developer claims.

"Universal implementation of cloud computing complicates and does more distributed both cloud deployments, and applications. Ensuring performance of experience of end users, applications, networks and suppliers of cloud services — the most difficult task. The updated Riverbed SteelCentral provides high visibility of applications and productivities of networks of hybrid and cloud environments and also exhaustive approach to measurement and management of digital experience. Orientation to experience of the end user, and support of the platform of Big Data, allows Riverbed SteelCentral to perform complex monitoring of performance". Mike Sargent, the senior vice president, the CEO on SteelCentral in Riverbed

According to the developer, in the provided release of SteelCentral basic functions of the solution improved:

• Visibility of packets in a cloud: the next release of a cloud solution of AppResponse collects and analyzes information on packets for deployment of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
• Visibility of a flow in a cloud: possibilities of SteelCentral NetProfiler extended for monitoring of flows in cloud environments and between a cloud and the enterprise.
• Transparency of modern cloud applicaions: implementation of integration of AppInternals with Kubernetes, Pivotal Cloud Foundry and Red Hat OpenShift for support of transparency at development stages and implementation of applications in a cloud, and for management of a difficult modern multistack ecosystem of applications.

Digital transformation in a root changes a development approach, to implementation and management of applications. The companies should implement target benefits of these crucial initiatives in the changeable ephemeral environment. Thanks to microservice architecture and compound applications development speed grows owing to what the companies even more often implement the solutions Kubernetes, Pivotal Cloud Foundry and Red Hat OpenShift for orchestration and delivery of containers and applications, noted in Riverbed.

According to the statement of the developer, SteelCentral APM uses the scalable approach to Big Data which is completely adapted to a cloud ecosystem. In AppInternals of the APM solution SteelCentral support of modern cloud computing architectures of applications extends that provides complete transparency of the transactions, containers and services working in Kubernetes, Pivotal Cloud Foundry and Red Hat OpenShift. SteelCentral APM will help the companies to start applications in the containers Docker and Pivotal Cloud Foundry to fix problems with performance and to simplify the user adaptation.

Partnership with Riverbed and integration into Pivotal stack, does possible simple and painless deployment of trace of the distributed applications on a cloud platform of Pivotal, for the high performance of applications, customer satisfaction and safety upon transition to more stable releases of applications.

SteelCentral is complemented with also cloud solution of NPM (performance management of network) which can browse at the same time widely network traffic of a cloud and is deep study interactions with cloud network, consider in Riverbed.

The updated NPM functions provided by the developer:

• Sales opportunity of the virtual device SteelCentral AppResponse as Amazon EC2 copy in Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).
• Additional opportunities of the reporting which allow the companies to investigate performance of cloud network in combination with performance of a local network, for exhaustive idea of the hybrid enterprise.
• The SteelCentral Agent expansion for collecting of package and stream information in a cloud. This agent is based on the strategy of the uniform license Riverbed which allows the companies to unroll repeatedly the agent through NPM, APM and EUEM (management of experience of end users).

2017: The integrated management of digital projects

On June 20, 2017 the Riverbed Technology company provided SteelCentral product update. In it the complete integrated management of digital projects is implemented.

The last update of the product SteelCentral from Riverbed — integrated solution for management of digital experience of end users. SteelCentral offers advanced monitoring and the analysis of all user services, since business activities on the user devices, in network, application servers up to the applied code to provide fast and effective solution for reliable and high-quality interaction of end users.

Latest version of SteelCentral

• Provides expanded monitoring of performance of end users and transparency of digital experience
• Reduces risks at migration of applications in a cloud and from it
• Allows the organizations to manage results during all lifecycle of the application
• Provides the integrated network, diagnostics and troubleshooting.

Our clients invest in digital projects for business transformation to gain trust of the clients and to increase productivity of work of employees and partners. Faultless digital experience — the most important part of their success, however approach of an era of cloud and mobile computing showed that traditional tools are not able to provide the high level of management any more. Width and depth of analytics (up to the level of specific transactions), available in the new version of SteelCentral, help our clients with achievement of strategic objectives. Alexander Stulov, the chief representative of Riverbed in Russia and the CIS

In this version of a product integration between SteelCentral Portal, SteelCentral Aternity and SteelCentral AppInternals is available. It means that users of SteelCentral can integrate experience of interaction on mobile devices, providing to IT department and heads a uniform view of performance of IT infrastructure and its influence on end users. Besides, the integrated workflow between SteelCentral Aternity and AppInternals provides the integrated monitoring system for all services of end users and allows an IT command to diagnose and debug quickly all applications, crucial for business, and on all devices. As result — one window for all commands involved in management of digital experience since services of end users to application developers and transactions, for IT commands and business heads.

In SteelCentral it is possible to plan and predict migration of applications. Commands of network planning and architecture can imitate and predict behavior of traffic and estimate its influence on network prior to migration of applications — from DPC at DPC, from DPC in a cloud and between cloud providers. As a result of the organization can plan cloud migrations, based on data, but not on the assumptions. SteelCentral allows the organizations to manage results during all lifecycle of the application.

SteelCentral AppInternals allows IT specialists to carry out the analysis and diagnostics of performance during all lifecycle of the application. Using the new REST interface, QA commands and developers can add testing of performance to the chain of tools and guarantee that the release is optimized under a product. Operational commands can receive notifications from popular tools for joint work like Slack and HipChat. Commands of support will be able automatically to register errors via instruments of processing of incidents, to calculate their root reasons and to carry out the assessment.

Riverbed provides integration between NetProfiler and NetIM. Network managers can estimate influence of network infrastructure on its performance and vice versa.

2016

SteelCentral 10.8.2

On October 18, 2016 the Riverbed Technology company provided Riverbed SteelCentral release.

The developer company intends to satisfy with this release requirements of the organizations for comprehensive performance management. SteelCentral release the Riverbed company continues to expand, integrate and simplify application performance management, proposing the complete solution for reduction or liquidation of fragmentation, simplification of process of monitoring of performance of applications and management of them.

Changes in SteelCentral improve process of interaction and operational compatibility of modules of monitoring that helps the companies to manage more effectively packet data, infrastructure, applications and unified communications (UC). In SteelCentral the functionality of management of experience of the end user is expanded.

SteelCentral aims to become the most complete building and integrated solution for performance management of IT in the market, providing monitoring of work of end users, applications, networks and infrastructures where they were — in a cloud or in the local environment. In new release important improvements which will help the organizations to manage performance of IT completely are provided. This release will give to our clients more opportunities at detection of performance concerns, having allowed to reveal quickly the prime causes, irrespective of the place of their emergence — in the application, network, infrastructure or on the device of the end user. Alexander Stulov, the chief representative of Riverbed Technology in Russia and the CIS

The upgraded Riverbed SteelCentral offers the improved platform components, including SteelCentral AppResponse 11, SteelCentral Packet Analyzer Plus, SteelCentral Transaction Analyzer Plus, SteelCentral UCExpert, SteelCentral NetIM and SteelCentral Aternity.

All changes in the Riverbed SteelCentral platform will become available in December, 2016.

Updating of spring of 2016

Riverbed Technology, the company specializing in performance of applications announced in the spring of 2016 new features in the solution Riverbed SteelCentral which considerably expand possibilities of troubleshooting and monitoring in a cloud and at the same time simplify use and scalability. These improvements support the general direction of development of integration of the SteelCentral platform and enhance crucial functionality for IT services:

• a possibility of application of powerful tools of monitoring in cloud environments Microsoft Azure and AWS;
• monitoring in the products PaaS and container environments;
• complex monitoring of performance of the virtualized network;
• expanded monitoring of unified communications (UC) due to support of Skype for Business;
• new level of diagnostics, search and fault recovery.

Expanded visibility of work in clouds, PaaS and containers

Aiming to improve adaptivity, IT pass to cloud services and adjacent technologies, such as PaaS, containers and microservices — for faster providing applications and their scaling. Using the updated release of Riverbed SteelCentral of IT will be able automatically to perform monitoring and for the applications relying on these technologies. IT departments which solve the current problems and are engaged in development, will be able to see behavior of applications in real time that will help not only to fix quickly existing problems, but also to proactively improve performance. Besides, the new release of SteelCentral AppInternals provides ready monitors of the applications started in the environment of Azure Cloud Services. It will be available to clients of AWS in Amazon Store of Web Services.

SteelCentral considerably expands possibilities of application monitoring, started on PaaS and in containers. As such environments are dynamically scaled during the peak and offpeak periods, traditional instruments of monitoring of performance monitoring interactions between servers cannot qualitatively display behavior of the application. In this release the Application Performance Graph tool which graphically displays interactions between application modules in real time, irrespectively core infrastructure is provided. It helps to see the dependences and hotspota which are often hidden behind elasticity of the environment. As a result of IT will be able quickly to distinguish and correct the problems influencing business in general.

Complex monitoring of network performance

The IT organizations even more often implement the virtualized servers for the purpose of simpler implementation and providing applications and also for cost reduction. Nevertheless, owing to the growing virtualization of DPC there are "white spots" in visibility of work. In new SteelCentral Riverbed capability of the organizations is considerably improved to perform monitoring of traffic of the virtualized servers. Having changed a method of collecting and correlation of data, SteelCentral considerably increases efficiency of monitoring and elimination of problems in the high-performance virtualized networks and Wednesdays.

Expanded monitoring of unified communications

The companies even more often use applications with unified communications (UC), nevertheless, identification of the prime causes of deteriorations in network functioning, errors of devices or the user errors in these solutions are labor-consuming and constantly repeating process. SteelCentral makes monitoring of performance and comfort of work of users in a set of UC solutions, including Microsoft Skype for Business and also Cisco and Avaya UC. All this became possible thanks to a multivendor and multi-user control panel which at first sight provides the overview of the general UC performance. Technical specialists can browse information on use, implementation, efficiency of calls and performance concerns and also to see processes and the transactions UC in most of which often there are difficulties. Information is provided via the intuitive interface — there is no need to study different tools or terminology of vendors. Besides, tools of the analysis of UC performance are integrated with instruments of performance review of networks, applications and infrastructures based on SteelCentral Portal now that gives to IT departments the unified and complete overview of performance of all IT services.

Diagnostics of new generation and troubleshooting

As performance of applications plays more and more important role in business, pro-active monitoring and troubleshooting in infrastructure of applications becomes a crucial element in company management, irrespective of the place of application launch — in a cloud or in the local environment. For increase in level of convenience and performance of SteelCentral upgraded the interface of the SteelCentral NetProfiler component. The screen of the preferred interfaces and network hotspot displays the most often used interfaces and also interfaces with the worst indicators of response time for users. As a result, IT specialists can quickly reveal zones which require special attention, and in advance to take necessary measures.

2015: There was SteelCentral release

On December 9, 2015 Riverbed Technology announced release of release of SteelCentral - command center performance of applications in hybrid IT environments.

The upgraded SteelCentral platform facilitates a search capability and troubleshooting. Innovations will be implemented in principal components of the platform, including Portal, AppInternals, AppResponse, NetAuditor, NetShark, NetPlanner and NetSensor. Improvements will give to the platform additional opportunities, including the expanded overview of network functioning and applications, comprehensive monitoring of transactions of applications, cost-efficient monitoring of web applications and WAN optimization.

SteelCentral offers own approach to performance management of IT services. The product collects and analyzes performance data on all networks and applications, carries out permanent monitoring of work of all users.

Changes in functionality of SteelCentral increase integration of the platform and add features:

• visibility of network functioning and applications is expanded. The SteelCentral platform considerably develops possibilities of team search and troubleshooting, giving the chance to see a real actual network path of the application against the background of the existing logical network and cards of the application. Employees of IT departments will be able quickly to switch between the current work types of applications and networks, to find the problem zones formed as a result of configuration change or other infrastructure changes that will allow specialists quickly and to precisely find the prime causes of malfunctions. Besides, the volume of storage of packets in NetShark was increased about 576 Tb that will allow to conduct more in-depth historical studies. It is especially important for the networks of large volume concentrated on solving of tasks on security or fulfillment of requirements and governed, for example, for the government organizations, the organizations of the financial sector or health care.

• end-to-end monitoring of transactions of applications. The product provides integration of metrics of delays in network functioning and metrics of performance of applications at the level of transactions, creating a complete overview of any set of transactions in the single user interface. Such context allows to arrange considerably processes of diagnostics of problems and to accelerate permission of complex malfunctions. It will allow IT departments to concentrate the efforts on accomplishment of strategic tasks instead of solving separate problems with performance in networks and applications.

• effective monitoring of web applications and WAN optimization. Hybrid IT environments become regulation and the companies even more often use Riverbed SteelHead for optimization of delivery of applications irrespective of where these applications are started — in the company, in virtual environment or a cloud. Improvements of the SteelCentral platform improve visibility and control in the environment of SteelHead, allowing clients to conduct monitoring of the statuses of SteelHead EX and SteelHead Interceptor devices as though they were a part of their general infrastructure. Besides, SteelCentral provides better monitoring of work final users when using of the web applications and the SaaS-applications such as Salesforce.com optimized using SteelHead by it.

Changes in the Riverbed SteelCentral platform are available since November, 2015.