SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - Oct 23, 2012) - Today, [ Riverbed Technology ] (NASDAQ: [ RVBD ]), the performance company, announced its application-aware network performance management (NPM) solution can now address network and application performance issues across the three key pillars of virtualization. New capabilities within the Cascade 10.0 release deliver the needed performance management for virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI), server virtualization, and fully virtualized data centers using VXLAN software-defined networks (SDNs). In addition, the Riverbed® Cascade® product family is now offered as a comprehensive virtual portfolio ready for deployment by service providers as well as in public, private, and hybrid clouds.

"With the spread of private clouds and virtualization, providers have been pushing for more control over the network. Current software-defined network overlay technologies being introduced by virtualization technology providers have visibility gaps, which in turn causes visibility issues for network engineers responsible for application performance troubleshooting," said Jonah Kowall, research director at Gartner. "Current monitoring and management tools must be updated and improved to see not only the traffic but the relevant additional data presented within these overlay technologies."

Visibility for Performance Across the Virtualization Environment
A major challenge facing IT organizations as they look to leverage the benefits of virtualization across their entire infrastructure is the need to provide their operations teams with the ability to pinpoint, understand, and troubleshoot performance issues within these virtualized environments. Cascade 10.0 provides detailed monitoring into the performance of virtualized environments, including the most popular VDI protocols, and is a NPM solution to provide visibility for VMware View® (PCoIP protocol) for actions such as screen refresh, print, type, etc. These details are critical for troubleshooting and optimizing the performance of interactive applications in VDI environments. Also supported is monitoring of the Common Internet File Systems (CIFS) protocol to ensure the performance of file sharing and collaboration applications such as Microsoft SharePoint.

The latest version of Cascade also provides performance monitoring of VXLAN SDNs by providing visibility into the UDP-encapsulated traffic and virtual tunnel endpoints. With these VXLAN capabilities, Cascade products provide network operations teams with the ability to:

• Control and understand VXLAN virtual overlay network performance
• Monitor and troubleshoot software-defined data centers (SDDC) and the physical network in a single, easy-to-use solution
• Provide SDDC owners a singular view into their data center's performance and service level agreements (SLAs)

"VXLAN enables enterprises to deploy virtual networks with the same simplicity and operational ease that they have grown to experience with virtual machines," said Jonathan Gohstand, director, product marketing, Networking and Security at VMware. "This latest collaboration between VMware and Riverbed brings the needed integration for visibility and performance management that can allow enterprises to adopt SDNs with confidence."

"Virtual data centers create several new challenges when attempting to gain visibility into application performance. The Riverbed Cascade products give us the visibility we need to monitor application performance, even if the underlying traffic never touches the physical network," said Jeff Boyer, network engineer at Ministry Health Care. "The flexibility of the solution allows us to proactively monitor and alert for performance metrics that can impact the end user experience whether the application is hosted on physical or virtual servers. When a problem is detected the same tools become valuable for gathering packet-level data to facilitate troubleshooting and fast problem resolution which helps us maintain our primary commitment to patients."

The new Cascade Profiler Virtual Edition and Cascade Gateway Virtual Edition join the Cascade Shark Virtual Edition for a completely virtualized NPM solution portfolio. Installed as a virtual machine (VM) on VMware vSphere®, Cascade Profiler Virtual Edition is the centralized analysis and reporting console that integrates application and network data from Cascade Shark Virtual Edition and Cascade Gateway Virtual Edition to provide enterprise-wide, service-level monitoring. Cascade Gateway Virtual Edition collects and aggregates flow data and statistics from network infrastructure and virtual environments for delivery to Cascade Profiler Virtual Edition. [ The fully virtualized Riverbed Cascade product family enables managed service providers (MSPs) ] to easily deploy and deliver application-aware NPM as a service to their small-to-medium-sized and enterprise customers.

"With these new Cascade products, IT managers have an easy-to-use, integrated solution that empowers them to deliver the high-performing applications and networks their businesses demand," said Dimitri Vlachos, senior director of marketing and products, Cascade Business Unit at Riverbed. "IT operations can now embrace the great benefits of virtualization without giving up the visibility and control required to run today's always-on enterprise networks."

For more information about Cascade products, visit [ http://www.riverbed.com/cascade ].

Availability
The enhanced Cascade solution and new virtual edition products are expected to be generally available in Q4 2012.

Additional Resources

• [ Infographic: What You Need to Know About Network Performance Management ]
• [ Riverbed Connect Podcast: Cascade 10.0 ]
• [ Feature Brief: What's New in Cascade 10.0 ]
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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, meet the needs of distributed organizations, and deliver anticipated solutions. 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. 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-Q filed with the SEC on July 27, 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.

VMware, VMware View, and VMware vSphere are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.