Riverbed Technology, a company that focuses on IT infrastructure performance company for networks, applications and storage, has announced that it has planned to launch new products and services that will help accelerate access to services that are in the cloud environment for enterprises and governments and extend the benefits of acceleration to applications and storage in the public cloud.

 

Riverbed (News - Alert) said that these new solutions will be made available by 2010 and first among them is the software version of its flagship Steelhead WAN optimization controller.

 

At its recent public Web cast cloud-launch event in New York City, Riverbed demonstrated the benefits of this upcoming virtual appliance for the public cloud. The virtual Steelhead for the cloud can take the advantages of Riverbed WAN optimization to private, public and hybrid cloud infrastructures by quickening the performance of applications and data transfers.

 

Riverbed officials said that through their forthcoming products they will be helping customers breach the performance barrier for cloud applications and cloud storage, starting with virtual Steelhead for the cloud. They will also make sure customers enjoy the same high-performance access to applications and storage that they have come to expect from their Riverbed-accelerated private clouds.

 

Analysts define “cloud-based” on three models: private data centers or private clouds; public, shared services or public clouds; and hybrid or virtual private clouds, which allow large enterprises and governments to benefit from the cost and operational advantages of public clouds while still providing control over critical assets. Riverbed right now offers private clouds as well as virtualized infrastructure.

 

Officials with the company have said the newly planned solutions demonstrates Riverbed’s willingness to expand its offerings to include solutions for customers facing performance issues in public or hybrid cloud models, or who are using remote data storage.

 

Many enterprises and governments see migration of storage to the cloud as an attractive option for cost and operational reasons. But issues such as high latency can limit the number applications that can be run on the cloud. Rewriting those applications or finding new interfaces to make them fit into the cloud can be costly and requires a lot of effort.

 

Analysts have pointed out that if only Riverbed could solve these issues the way they did for applications and data transfers on the WAN and let users utilize the cloud like the way they use disk drives, the advantages arising out of it are supposedly endless.

 

Recently Riverbed announced Steelhead Mobile 3.0 and embraced the cloud at Interop (News - Alert) New York 2009.