SAN FRANCISCO -- Riverbed today announced Riverbed SaaS Accelerator, a breakthrough new solution that significantly accelerates the performance of leading SaaS apps, such as O365, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Box, by up to 10 times. When SaaS Accelerator is combined with End User Experience Monitoring (part of Riverbed’s Digital Experience Management offering), organizations can for the first time directly measure and monitor in real time the performance of SaaS-based enterprise applications, and then effortlessly accelerate performance with SaaS Accelerator.

As a cloud-based solution, SaaS Accelerator enables organizations to turn up the service within minutes so they can benefit immediately from improved performance, and Riverbed SD-WAN customers benefit from one-click provisioning using the Riverbed SD-WAN management console. Additionally, existing SteelHead appliance and SteelHead Mobile customers can leverage their current investment when they deploy SaaS Accelerator, for a comprehensive solution that extends from the end user device through the network to the SaaS application. And for organizations with a security posture that requires all SaaS traffic be backhauled through a corporate data center, the introduction of Riverbed SaaS Accelerator enables those companies to maintain that approach while eliminating the latency challenges that can often hinder productivity for mobile and remote employees.

New SD-WAN Enhancements

Riverbed also announced enhancements to its SD-WAN solutions (SteelConnect and SteelHead SD), which provide unified orchestration and connectivity across the entire distributed enterprise network with embedded security, optimization and visibility. This release boosts agility, security and operation efficiency with advances in multi-cloud network automation, enhanced service-chaining for on-premises and cloud-based security services, and increased flexibility to deploy and manage SD-WAN in more complex global environments. This SD-WAN release also includes additional integration with Zscaler that delivers one-click integration to Zscaler’s security platform for thousands of branch locations.

James Orgill, IT Operations Manager at Trajan Scientific & Medical, a global manufacturer of scientific solutions, has deployed Riverbed’s SD-WAN solution across the organization: “We’re pursuing an aggressive growth strategy through acquisition, to accelerate our mission to make a positive impact on human wellbeing. We often need to get multiple new sites online and integrated into our systems - across continents - in a matter of days. That kind of agility required a total rethink of our network. Riverbed’s cloud-based SD-WAN solution allows us to react faster and to be more efficient in the complex environment we run in, as well as slash monthly network costs by more than half.”

Advancements in Digital Experience Management (DEM) solution

Riverbed also announced advancements to its DEM offering, the industry’s leading and most comprehensive solution to measure and manage the digital experience of end users. This includes the introduction of an automated remediation feature that helps support organizations proactively address and resolve common user device issues before they impact user experience or are escalated to support. The result is better user satisfaction, lower IT costs and improved stability.

Switzerland’s third largest bank, Raiffeisen, is using Riverbed’s DEM solution to transform the digital experience of its employees and support its mobile workforce strategy: “Our employees must have access to all the applications they need, from any device, at any time,” said Stefan Somogyi, System Specialist Expert, Raiffeisen Switzerland. “With Riverbed, we are able to proactively identify problems, often before employees even know an issue exists and address, drill down, solve the problem, and show people what the root cause was. We have fewer issues to resolve and the ones we do have get resolved more rapidly.”

Riverbed Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: RVBD)

— Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading