NetApp and Riverbed to Help Businesses Protect Data

Riverbed Technology and Network Appliance announced Dec. 7 that they have penned a support agreement to provide businesses with ways to protect their distributed data.

The two companies will combine to enable business users to copy, backup and consolidate their distributed data by using support processes for Riverbeds WDS (wide-area data services) along with NetApp unified storage systems, NetApp NearStore nearline storage systems and NetApp V-Series.

Patrick Rogers, vice president of product and alliances at Network Appliance, said in a company release that the agreement will benefit enterprise customers by better protecting their distributed data.

The companies also said that the agreement will enable businesses to lessen the amount of data that is copied from a corporate data center to a remote disaster recovery site with a NetApp and Riverbed platform.

WDS from Riverbed gives enterprises with more than one office a way to combat data protection challenges such as poor application performance and insufficient bandwidth at remote sites by improving the performance of applications between distributed sites.

Eric Wolford, senior vice president of marketing and business development at Riverbed, said this is important because the ability to replicate distributed data to a secure data center is a requirement for enterprises that plan to consolidate IT infrastructures.

One of Riverbeds offerings, Steelhead WDS appliances, allow businesses to improve IT, enhance backup and replication processes and strengthen productivity and collaboration processes.

Wolford concluded that the interoperability of Riverbeds WDS appliances and NetApp enterprise-ready storage and protection products will improve business continuity by speeding up the replication and improving the management of distributed data.

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