Riverbed Technology has announced that it is one of the first partners to join the new Microsoft Azure Certified programme. In addition, Riverbed will now offer a Microsoft Azure-certified version of Riverbed SteelHead CX for IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) clouds that can be deployed as an Azure virtual machine and managed by the Azure Management Portal.
The combination of Riverbed SteelHead and Microsoft Azure allows customers to take advantage of the cost-savings and agility of the cloud, while optimising and accelerating the delivery of applications from Azure to business locations up to 33x faster, while using up to 97% less bandwidth.
“With the cloud gaining traction across a multitude of business functions, organisations need to run their applications in a hybrid environment and are turning to services like Azure,” says Paul O’Farrell, senior vice-president and GM, SteelHead Products Group at Riverbed.
“Regardless of where an application is hosted, it needs to perform to the satisfaction of the end-user. SteelHead’s optimisation and acceleration capabilities help deliver that ideal end-user experience, while enabling cost saving and higher productivity. We’re delighted to be among the first companies to kick off the program. Together Riverbed and Microsoft are delivering mission-critical applications across infrastructure-as-a-service faster than ever before.”
The Microsoft Azure Certified program makes it easy to find and deploy Azure-integrated solutions such as SteelHead. The first phase of this program is Microsoft Azure Certified for virtual machines and provides an onramp for Microsoft partners to take their applications to the cloud and integrate with the existing Azure customer base.
“Microsoft Azure is an end-to-end cloud platform for business and we’re excited to create an ecosystem for partners to expand their exposure to companies around the world who are taking advantage of the cloud transformation,” says Garth Fort, GM, Cloud and Enterprise Partner Marketing, Microsoft Corporation.
“Eliminating the barriers between cloud development and operational management is critical. Riverbed is one of the first strategic partners to provide the cloud application performance infrastructure that improves the end user’s experience.”
Riverbed SteelHead is the industry’s number one WAN optimisation solution that helps IT ensure optimal service levels for applications among data centres, branch locations, cloud networks, and end users. SteelHead, further, allows IT to prioritise delivery of mission-critical applications over the best available network with customised per-application service level agreements (SLAs).
SteelHead pioneered WAN optimisation in 2004 with unique innovations for application, transport, and data streamlining across the WAN and Internet to deliver the best end-user experience regardless of location while dramatically reducing network bandwidth costs. With SteelHead, enterprise and SaaS applications can be delivered up to 33x faster while using 97% less bandwidth.
Riverbed SteelHead is part of the Riverbed Application Performance Platform, the most complete platform to enable organisations to embrace location-independent computing, so that business objectives – not technical constraints – drive how applications and data are delivered.
