San Francisco — October 4, 2005 — Riverbed Technology, the performance leader in application acceleration on wide area networks, today announced the results of an August 2005 survey in which Riverbed® customers were asked about satisfaction with Riverbed's Steelhead® wide-area data services (WDS) appliance deployment and support. Customers also reported on performance of key applications following Steelhead deployment, motivations for purchasing Steelhead appliances, drivers for IT consolidation, and overall satisfaction after consolidating IT infrastructure. Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) has certified the results. According to the survey, overall satisfaction with the Steelhead appliance and product support are at 8.7 on a scale of 1-10.

“The positives of selecting and deploying Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances are obvious in the data,” said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst at the Enterprise Storage Group (ESG). “People truly find Steelhead to be a huge benefit to their organizations.”

The survey reveals that customers purchased Riverbed products for application acceleration, WAN optimization and site consolidation. Approximately two thirds of the respondents reported using the products as part of a site consolidation project, while nearly all respondents stated that they were using the product for either WAN optimization or application acceleration, or both. Key applications accelerated include Windows File Sharing (CIFS), Microsoft Exchange, FTP, replication, CAD/CAM/CAE applications, ERP applications, Web-based applications, MS-SQL applications and custom applications. The vast majority of Riverbed customers report accelerations for those key applications of between 6x and 100x.

“This data shows that customers are deploying Steelhead appliances for a broad range of applications and requirements and are pleased with the results delivered,” said Jerry Kennelly, CEO and president of Riverbed Technology. “An equal number of customers reported that they purchased Steelhead appliances to solve application acceleration and WAN optimization issues and nearly all customers reported that they are optimizing a broad range of applications. The survey verifies that customers are not only looking for a Windows File sharing solution, but for a comprehensive product set that will enable them to optimize a variety of application types. Clearly, Riverbed has met this need and is delivering on the promise of wide-area data services.”

The survey also looked at site consolidation in more detail. Customers report that simplification of IT and reduction of management overhead were their primary drivers. However, other strong considerations were reduced costs, improved data protection, improved compliance, reduction of patches and upgrades and elimination of branch office backups. Those companies that have implemented IT consolidation projects report strong satisfaction with the results. Applications consolidated include Windows, Exchange, Lotus Notes, Filers and Tape Backup. Customers also report bandwidth savings that average between 40-80% following deployment of Steelhead.

Riverbed’s Steelhead appliance is the only wide-area data services (WDS) product on the market that solves all the key problems with application performance on wide area networks (WANs). These problems have been or are currently experienced by virtually every multi-site company in the world. The company’s Steelhead appliances deliver the industry’s best network compression, optimize the behavior of TCP, and add application-specific optimizations to minimize the effect of high latency on common enterprise applications.

Riverbed surveyed 112 enterprise customers in August 2005 who had purchased and deployed Steelhead appliances in 2004 or 2005. The results were examined and verified by Enterprise Strategy Group.

Riverbed Technology is the pioneer in wide-area data services (WDS), a fast-growing product category that solves the problems of high latency and low bandwidth that plague a wide variety of applications over distributed networks. Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances provide the highest level of performance across the broadest range of applications over WANs, accelerating applications by up to 100 times, and reducing WAN traffic by up to 95%. By providing optimizations that are orders of magnitude greater than what users experience today, Riverbed is changing the way people work – and enabling, for the first time, a distributed workforce that can collaborate as if they were local. InfoWorld named Steelhead a “Technology of the Year” for 2005 as the “Best WAN Accelerator.” Riverbed’s award-winning solutions are available worldwide from resellers who are members of the Riverbed Partner Network, Riverbed OEM partners, or directly from Riverbed. Riverbed has received funding from Accel Partners, Goldman Sachs, Lightspeed Venture Partners and UV Partners.

The performance numbers listed reflect survey responses from existing customers. Product performance varies on a number of attributes. The numbers listed are not a guarantee that this performance will be achieved for all customers in all settings.

Riverbed Technology, Riverbed, Steelhead and the Riverbed logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riverbed Technology, Inc.

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For more information, visit www.riverbed.com.

Media Contacts:

Alan Saldich
Riverbed Technology  
(415) 247-7308 
alan@riverbed.com

Kim Kapustka
K2pr
(650) 685-6342
kim@k2pr.com

 

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