Riverbed Technology’s expertise is in accelerating application performance
within the enterprise. Akamai Technologies is known for its ability to optimize
network performance across public clouds.
Now
the two companies are joining forces to optimize WAN traffic in hybrid cloud
environments.
Riverbed
and Akamai officials announced May 10 their plans to create a joint application
acceleration solution that leverages the capabilities of both vendors to
improve performance in hybrid cloud networks. The companies made the
announcement at the Interop 2011 show in Las Vegas.
The
combination will be a boon to businesses will be able to “combine the benefits
on the public cloud side … with the benefits of Riverbed on the private side
with WAN optimization,” Nik Rouda, director of solutions marketing at Riverbed,
said in an interview with eWEEK.
The
companies expect to launch their joint solution early next year. The plan is
for Akamai’s Internet optimization software to be integrated into Riverbed’s
Steelhead appliances, bringing Akamai’s capabilities into enterprise networks
and extending them from the edge to the data center. In turn, Akamai’s edge
servers will be integrated with Steelhead’s optimization features, bringing
those capabilities from the data center to the public cloud.
The
solution will be designed to address the key problems that officials with both
Riverbed and Akamai said are stunting application performance in the cloud: The
vast distances between users and their cloud providers; the different types of
data and applications that are being handled in the cloud; and access problems
caused by the need for businesses to use private WANs to connect to private
clouds while also using connections in those data centers to connect to
applications in public clouds hosted by cloud service providers.
Riverbed’s
Steelhead technology can enhance application performance over the private WAN
to the data center, but it needs Steelhead appliances in both ends of the
connection to speed performance. Having the Steelhead capabilities integrated
into Akamai’s edge servers—and having Steelhead appliances support Akamai’s
networking optimization technologies—means that performance optimization is now
supported from the data center through the private clouds and out into the
public clouds, they said.
“We’re
going to solve all three of those problems,” Neil Cohen, senior director of
product marketing at Akamai, said in an interview.
Customers
should see immediate and long-term benefits from the joint solutions, Cohen
said. They’ll see more reliable performance from hybrid clouds, which will
improve productivity, and they won’t have to buy more technology to get the
optimization benefits.
“We
have the footprints now,” Cohen said, noting the expertise both Riverbed and
Akamai have. “Customers don’t have to purchase new hardware.”
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