Riverbed Technology Inc. has updated SteelConnect and SteelFusion, two core components of its increasingly unified platform for streamlining remote and branch office IT.
The San Francisco-based application performance infrastructure vendor today announced that SteelConnect 2.0, the latest version of its software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) solution, will enter general availability in October.
Introduced in April and based on technology Riverbed acquired in January with the purchase of German SD-WAN vendor Ocedo, SteelConnect is software and an associated set of WAN gateways, remote local-area network switches, and Wi-Fi access points that are designed to centralize deployment and orchestration of hybrid WANs, remote office LANs, and cloud-based environments like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
The new edition announced today integrates with Riverbed’s SteelCentral network monitoring solution and SteelHead WAN optimization offering, as well as Riverbed Interceptor, a WAN optimization load balancing solution for large data centers.
The updated release also offers native dynamic routing, which will enable organizations to lower the cost and complexity of remote office infrastructure management by using SteelConnect Gateways in place of branch routers.
SteelConnect 2.0 reaches market just five months after version 1.0, which is still available only via an early access program. That aggressive pace of development underscore’s Riverbed’s desire to get in early on a market currently poised for explosive growth. Indeed, IDC expects global SD-WAN revenues to expand at an over 90 percent CAGR through 2020 to $6 billion.
Also announced today were updates to SteelFusion, a branch office IT solution designed to simplify remote office management while enhancing security and business continuity. The system enables companies to centralize branch office data in their own data center or a public cloud environment and replace stand-alone onsite servers, storage, and backup infrastructure with a single hyperconverged appliance.
Effective today, SteelFusion supports IBM’s SoftLayer public cloud in addition to Amazon Web Services and Azure. Furthermore, the solution’s hyperconverged appliance will be available in a virtual form factor as well as the original physical format by the end of the year. Shipped in pre-integrated hardware/software bundles that will initially be sold exclusively by Phoenix-based distributor Avnet Inc., the new virtual appliances will run on a wide variety of off-the-shelf server products.
Riverbed made today’s announcements on the brink of its Disrupt conference, which takes place today in New York City. That event’s agenda includes a session specifically devoted to SteelConnect 2.0.
