SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - Mar 8, 2012) - [ Riverbed Technology ] (NASDAQ: [ RVBD ]), the performance company, today announced that it will host the fifth annual SHARKFEST 2012 at UC Berkeley, June 24 - 27. SHARKFEST is an annual gathering of the global community of Wireshark developers and users to share knowledge around Wireshark, a packet and network analyzer, as well as other complementary open source projects. In addition to networking and socializing with peers, attendees will participate in educational and training sessions, collaborate with network management experts on best practices, and hear from specialists in the field, including keynoters Steve Riley, an industry visionary, and Cliff Stoll, a U.S. astronomer and author.

SHARKFEST is a four-day gathering of instruction, knowledge transfer, and sharing of the latest best practices on network security, management, troubleshooting and optimization technology in both the open source and commercial arena. Attendees include developers of Wireshark and other network-related open source tools, IT professionals, computer science students and teachers, security and network consultants, network engineers, veteran network analysis trainers, and users. In addition to collaborating on best practices, attendees will benefit from hands-on labs with world-class veteran network consultants and trainers.

The conference will feature two keynote sessions from industry specialists:

• Cliff Stoll, U.S. astronomer and author, will share his experience pursuing hacker Markus Hess in 1986 and the subsequent 1989 book detailing his investigation, The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage. This investigation is recognized as one of the first examples of digital forensics; at the time, gaining co-operation from law enforcement was a challenge due to the relatively new nature of the crime. This keynote will take place on Monday, June 25 at 9 a.m. - 10 a.m.
• Steve Riley is a technical leader in the Office of the CTO at Riverbed, and is a specialist in information security, compliance, privacy, and enterprise cloud computing architecture. In his keynote address "In the Cloud, Everything You Think You Know is Wrong," Mr. Riley will expand on the core thought that while the Cloud is certainly evoking a re-centralization of compute and storage, it's more accurate to regard it as "distributed re-centralization" because access to data is as far from centralized as we can imagine. This keynote will take place on Tuesday, June 26 from 9 a.m. - 10 a.m.

"Gathering together each year in-person provides a foundation for the Wireshark community to educate, collaborate and innovate around not only Wireshark, but additional open source projects," said Gerald Combs, director of open source projects at Riverbed, and original author of the Wireshark source code. "Over the past six years our ecosystem has grown due to the growing need for network professionals to understand how to address the ever-changing challenges around network monitoring and troubleshooting within the enterprise. We look forward to this year's forum and the innovation that results from interactions that take place at the conference."

Riverbed acquired CACE Technologies, Inc. in October 2010 and is the sponsor of the Wireshark open source development project. As sponsor, Riverbed is committed to continuing the strong, independent and community-driven nature of Wireshark.

Conference Registration
Conference registration is now open at [ http://www.certain.com/system/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x124358992d8 ]. Interested parties are encouraged to take advantage of the early bird rate of $695.00, which is available through the end of March. The regular conference registration fee is $895.

Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements relating to the expected demand for Riverbed's products and services, and statements relating to Riverbed's ability to grow market share and meet the needs of distributed organizations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they do not fully materialize or prove incorrect, could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include our ability to react to trends and challenges in our business and the markets in which we operate; our ability to anticipate market needs or develop new or enhanced products to meet those needs; the adoption rate of our products; our ability to establish and maintain successful relationships with our distribution partners; our ability to compete in our industry; fluctuations in demand, sales cycles and prices for our products and services; shortages or price fluctuations in our supply chain; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; general political, economic and market conditions and events; and other risks and uncertainties described more fully in our documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. More information about these and other risks that may impact Riverbed's business are set forth in our Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 10, 2012. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Any future product, feature or related specification that may be referenced in this release are for information purposes only and are not commitments to deliver any technology or enhancement. Riverbed reserves the right to modify future product plans at any time.

About Riverbed
Riverbed delivers performance for the globally connected enterprise. With Riverbed, enterprises can successfully and intelligently implement strategic initiatives such as virtualization, consolidation, cloud computing, and disaster recovery without fear of compromising performance. By giving enterprises the platform they need to understand, optimize and consolidate their IT, Riverbed helps enterprises to build a fast, fluid and dynamic IT architecture that aligns with the business needs of the organization. Additional information about Riverbed (NASDAQ: [ RVBD ]) is available at [ www.riverbed.com ].

Riverbed and any Riverbed product or service name or logo used herein are trademarks of Riverbed Technology, Inc. All other trademarks used herein belong to their respective owners.