Riverbed Services Platform
Enhance business performance by integrating Security with the Riverbed Services Platform
Consolidation and virtualization are hot trends in IT, helping businesses increase their flexibility and efficiency in delivering valuable services while reducing costs. The enhanced Riverbed Services Platform (RSP) provides customers with the capability to run up to five additional services and applications virtually on VMware in a protected partition on the Steelhead appliance. This revolutionary approach allows customers to deploy local services in all their branch offices without the need to deploy and maintain full-blown servers to run the applications. The business benefits are minimizing the hardware needed at the branch office, enabling companies to consolidate IT operations even further, reducing costs, and simplifying administration, all while still delivering essential local services.
- Check Point on RSP
- Websense on RSP
Riverbed Partners with Check Point to Deliver Virtualized Solutions Integrating Security and WAN Optimization
New Best-of-Breed Solution Streamlines Deployment of Remote and Branch Office Security
San Francisco, Calif. - May 19, 2009 - Riverbed Technology (Nasdaq: RVBD), the IT infrastructure performance company for networks, applications and storage, today announced a partnership with Check Point Software Technologies (Nasdaq: CHKP) to provide enterprise customers a single solution that combines Riverbed award-winning WAN optimization technology with Check Point's leading security software. The joint solution will help companies protect and safeguard networks at remote and branch offices through a unique virtualized environment.
The partnership takes advantage of the complementary capabilities of the two companies' technologies. The Riverbed Services Platform (RSP), a virtualized, extensible data services platform, allows customers to deploy best-of-breed edge services. Check Point Security Gateway R70 provides customers a comprehensive set of centrally managed best-in-class security protections. Through Check Point's unique Software Blade architecture, customers can select the exact security protections they need for an environment, including firewall, VPN, intrusion prevention, antivirus, anti-spyware, URL filtering, Web security, anti-spam and policy management software blades. Customers can deploy virtual appliances, such as Security Gateway R70, directly on Riverbed Steelhead appliances to minimize complexity at the branch office and reduce costs and operational overhead.
"As a cost savings measure, many enterprises are looking to execute on IT consolidation initiatives. The RSP allows enterprises to streamline IT resources while lowering operational and capital costs," said Alan Saldich, vice president of product marketing at Riverbed. "By combining these business-critical services - from Check Point and Riverbed - in one solution at the branch, enterprises are able to take advantage of superior security and acceleration, while lowering operational costs."
"The cooperation between Check Point and Riverbed brings customers WAN optimization together with robust security, all in a single solution," said Amnon Bar-Lev, vice president of field operations at Check Point. "Check Point Security Gateway R70 on Riverbed's Steelhead appliance is a creative approach that leverages virtualization technology and adds to it Check Point's renowned security capabilities."
Running on the RSP will offer customers the combination of Check Point's market-leading security and the core Riverbed acceleration functionality within a single hardware platform - the Steelhead appliance. Using the RSP, customers can deliver virtualized edge services for branch offices that are both best-of-breed and cost-effective.
Based on Check Point's new Software Blade architecture, Check Point Security Gateway R70 provides businesses with flexible security. The Software Blade architecture empowers businesses with the ability to select the exact security applications or "software blades" they need from a library of over 20 software blades. New software blades can be added without deploying new hardware, reducing deployment times and operational costs.
"Consolidation at the branch is a top priority for enterprises as they look to implement cost-cutting initiatives. Enterprises, however, are challenged with keeping their IT infrastructure secure and their workforces efficient, while eliminating costs across the organization," said Jon Oltsik, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "The partnership between Check Point Software and Riverbed provides a solution to these challenges by providing best-of-breed security and WAN optimization on one virtualized platform. By taking advantage of the virtualized platform, organizations can eliminate operational costs without compromising the performance or security of their IT infrastructure."
Websense and Riverbed Team to Deliver Industry-Leading Web Security and WAN Optimization Solution for the Enterprise
Websense Web Security integrated with Riverbed Services Platform helps organizations enhance business performance and security
SAN FRANCISCO - May 21, 2009 -- Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD), the IT infrastructure performance company for networks, applications and storage, and Websense, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBSN) today announced that the two companies have joined forces to offer enterprise customers Websense's industry-leading Web security solutions combined with market-leading WAN optimization from Riverbed. The Websense Web Security solution will be offered on the Riverbed Services Platform (RSP), a feature of the Steelhead appliance. Websense offers Hosted Web Security today for the branch. The companies anticipate that Websense will offer its Hosted Web Security with Riverbed solutions in a "hybrid" mode at a later date to provide organizations with the most comprehensive, flexible and up-to-date security solutions.
Websense Web Security can be deployed on the RSP, a virtualized, extensible data services platform integrated with the Steelhead appliance hardware that allows customers to deploy multiple best-of-breed edge services that formerly required dedicated servers. By installing Websense Web Security software on Riverbed Steelhead appliances, organizations can consolidate WAN and Web security deployments, making their IT infrastructure faster, less expensive, and more secure. Customers can deploy these virtualized appliances, with services such as Websense Web Security, to further simplify IT infrastructure at branch and remote offices to reduce costs and operational overhead.
Riverbed Steelhead appliance customers will have the flexibility to deploy Websense Web Security as "on premise" software, as a fully hosted service for remote workers, or, in an anticipated future release, through a hybrid hosted "software-as-a-service" model. This flexibility will allow joint customers to leverage the power of software-as-a-service (SaaS) to deploy Web security "in the cloud" for branch offices and remote users with Websense Hosted Web Security quickly and cost-effectively.
Websense will install seamlessly on the RSP to enable a "serverless" deployment at the branch with the option of centralized reporting and policy management with the Websense V10000 secure Web gateway appliance in the central datacenter. The addition of the Websense V10000 secure Web gateway appliance allows content to be inspected in real-time with Riverbed optimizing the network traffic from the branch to the central datacenter. The enterprise achieves the best of both worlds: deep content inspection and scalability without sacrificing bandwidth or application acceleration.
"Unlike competitive offerings that promise strong application acceleration and security but don't deliver convincingly on either front, the Websense and Riverbed integrated solution offers true best-of-breed and best-in-class security and application acceleration. As we move forward with the next phase of the relationship, customers will have the choice of appliance, software or SaaS deployment options," said Ray Kruck, senior director of business development, Websense, Inc. "The Websense and Riverbed joint offering is a powerful security solution architecture that protects essential information within Web-based applications and optimizes its access and delivery across the distributed enterprise."
"Through our virtualized RSP, enterprises can take advantage of core network services for branch offices, like best-of-breed Websense Web Security, and obtain extended value in the Riverbed Steelhead appliances," said Alan Saldich, vice president of product marketing at Riverbed. "Enterprises are executing on initiatives to reconcile the competing demands of IT consolidation and the growing distributed workforce. The RSP provides enterprises with a platform to address this challenge while cutting costs."
The Riverbed-Websense joint solution will be available through the companies' respective resellers and sales forces - RSP from Riverbed and Websense Web Security through Websense. Websense Web Security running on the RSP is scheduled to be available in June of 2009. The future SaaS hybrid deployment options are scheduled to be available in the first quarter of 2010.
IT Consolidation at the Edge
Organisations have widely implemented IT infrastructure consolidation measures to reap many of the well-known benefits: simplified management, lower costs, and improved data protection and resource utilization. Despite these efforts, there are still services that must be delivered locally.
Local print, DNS, and DHCP are good examples of these type of "edge" services that defy many central consolidation efforts. The RSP now allows organizations to run these services on the Steelhead appliance, so organizations can eliminate these now redundant servers to further reduce hardware, software, and maintenance costs and IT complexity.
Game-changing Architecture
The RSP is uniquely suited to branch office server consolidation and virtualization. First, the Steelhead appliance is the only wide area network (WAN) optimization device to run industry-leading technology from VMware as the virtualization platform, taking advantage of the skills companies already have in house. Virtual servers run in a protected zone and do not impact the resources needed for peak Steelhead appliance operations. The RSP also enables customers to run up to five different virtual machines at once, eliminating many more servers from the branch office. And, the RSP runs on most Steelhead appliance models, enabling customers to benefit without having to replace their previous investments in Riverbed. The RSP has advanced network rules capabilities, guaranteeing that data travels in and out from the LAN or WAN in a fashion that matches the nature of the application being served. Benefiting from the Riverbed Technology Alliance (RTA), the RSP also supports tested applications from a wide variety of category leading products, as well as any VMware virtual machine.
What next?
If you're looking to consolidate your Security onto the Riverbed RSP or just interested to learn more, get in touch with Metadigm using the form below or call 01763 268222, we're happy to help answer any questions you may have.
