SAN FRANCISCO – May 19, 2010 — Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD), the IT performance company, today announced  the results of a survey conducted at Interop Las Vegas 2010. The survey confirms that businesses of all sizes are moving to consolidate IT resources in an effort to reduce costs and simplify management.  Over 350 Interop attendees were surveyed during the three-day exhibition in Las Vegas.  The survey results reveal that organizations are rapidly moving towards virtualization and IT consolidation, with 65 percent of those surveyed responding that they have already begun the process of creating a centralized IT environment.  As a continuation of Interop Las Vegas, United Business Media this week is hosting a Virtual Interop conference. During the event, Riverbed® customer Lathrop & Gage, a large, full-service law firm, will participate in a panel discussion regarding the company’s IT consolidation efforts, which include cloud computing and virtualization initiatives.

When asked in what ways they have created a centralized IT environment, 43 percent of respondents revealed that they have already begun implementing private cloud projects, where IT resources are being consolidated or virtualized to the data center.  The three primary motivating factors for IT consolidation projects cited by respondents included: reducing costs (listed by 64 percent of respondents), reducing management and complexity (39 percent), and increasing security (32 percent).

In addition to consolidation to private cloud environments, organizations are also spearheading efforts to consolidate branch office infrastructure.  14 percent of respondents indicated that they are virtualizing and consolidating resources within the branch office.  Another 35 percent of respondents revealed that they will begin branch office consolidation projects by 2011. 

As organizations continue the push toward IT consolidation at the branch office, Riverbed offers the Riverbed Services Platform (RSP), a virtualized platform that enables organizations to run edge services such as local print, DNS, DHCP, video and firewall in a protected partition on a Steelhead® appliance. With RSP, Riverbed customers can deploy these business-critical services in the branch while still reaping the benefits of consolidation, including simplified management, reduced IT footprint in the branch and lower costs.

In the survey, the top two concerns cited by organizations looking to consolidate their IT environments included performance, which was named as a top concern by 67 percent of respondents, and security, which was listed by 53 percent. Data availability (27 percent) and migration difficulties (15 percent) rounded out the primary concerns regarding the implementation of IT consolidation and virtualization projects.

“The Interop audience draws a wide spectrum of IT professionals that cover networking, applications and storage markets, much like our customer base.  The responses from the Interop survey match what we hear from our customers, namely that cloud computing, virtualization and consolidation are strategic IT initiatives for many organizations,” said Apurva Davé, vice president of product marketing for Riverbed. “Organizations encounter performance bottlenecks as consolidation and cloud computing models move users farther away from their data and applications. Riverbed helps customers overcome these productivity challenges to allow customers to both improve business performance and realize significant ROI.”

Other findings of the survey include:

• Application Acceleration and Performance – 40 percent of respondents plan to deploy application acceleration and performance solutions within the next 12 months.
• Data Center Consolidation – 33 percent of respondents plan additional data center consolidation projects within the next 12 months.
• Bandwidth Reduction and Optimization – 34 percent of respondents are looking to deploy WAN optimization solutions to reduce bandwidth consumption in the next 12 months.
• Network and Application Visibility – 31 percent of respondents are planning on deploying network and application visibility solutions by 2011.

Virtual Interop: Riverbed Customer Lathrop & Gage to Discuss Cloud Computing and Virtualization
On May 20, 2010 at 2:45 pm ET, Ben Weinberger, Lathrop & Gage CIO and Riverbed customer, will participate in a panel discussion during the Virtual Interop Conference titled “Infrastructure 2.1: Optimizing Your Infrastructure for the New Era of Cloud Computing and Virtualization.” In the session, Weinberger will discuss how Lathrop & Gage deployed Riverbed Steelhead appliances to optimize its consolidated IT infrastructure.

Who: Ben Weinberger, CIO, Lathrop & Gage
When: May 20, 2010, 2:45 pm ET
Where: Registration information for this free event can be found here.
What: “Infrastructure 2.1: Optimizing Your Infrastructure for the New Era of Cloud Computing and Virtualization.”
Overview: Most IT organizations are taking IT resources such as servers, applications and storage out of branch offices and placing them into centralized data centers. This raises some critical questions: How can IT organizations overcome the impediments to the broad deployment of virtual desktops? Should the next generation branch office be serverless?  What type of device(s) needs to still be in the branch office and how is it managed?  What techniques can be used to overcome the performance issues?  On this panel, enterprise IT professionals will share what they did in their companies to answer those questions, and will also present alternative designs for your next generation branch office.
Moderator: Jim Metzler, Principal, Ashton, Metzler & Associates

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 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-Q filed with the SEC on April 30, 2010.  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 Technology is the IT performance company. The Riverbed family of wide area network (WAN) optimization solutions liberates businesses from common IT constraints by increasing application performance, enabling consolidation, and providing enterprise-wide network and application visibility – all while eliminating the need to increase bandwidth, storage or servers. Thousands of companies with distributed operations use Riverbed to make their IT infrastructure faster, less expensive and more responsive. Additional information about Riverbed (NASDAQ: RVBD) is available at www.riverbed.com.

Riverbed Technology, Riverbed, Steelhead, RiOS, Interceptor, Think Fast, the Riverbed logo, Mazu, Profiler and Cascade are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riverbed Technology, Inc. All other trademarks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

MEDIA CONTACT
Kristalle Ward
Riverbed Technology
415-247-8140
Kristalle.Ward@riverbed.com

INVESTOR RELATIONS CONTACT
Renee Lyall
Riverbed Technology
415-247-6353
Renee.Lyall@riverbed.com

 

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