Riverbed Working With HP ProCurve

Riverbed Technology is working with HP ProCurve to deliver WAN optimization through the HP ProCurve Open Network Ecosystem (HP ProCurve ONE), a new multi-vendor alliance program.

As part of this relationship, Riverbed will enable its Riverbed Optimization System, which powers its Steelhead product family, to run on the HP ProCurve ONE Services zl module, a blade for the HP ProCurve Switch 5400zl and 8200zl series that consolidates partner applications onto a common platform, enabling reduced costs and optimizing rack space. Riverbed WAN optimization running on HP ProCurve infrastructure provides customers with a next-generation data center solution that allows CIOs to reconcile the conflicting demands of serving distributed employees with ever increasing data management requirements with centralized IT. The joint solution should be available in the second half of 2009.

"There is a widening gap between IT requirements and budgets," said Eric Wolford, senior vice president, marketing and business development at Riverbed. "Efforts such as IT centralization, virtualization and data center consolidation are often motivated by an effort to close that gap, but often introduce performance issues at remote locations that affect the business bottom-line. Riverbed WAN optimization solutions help overcome these issues and can make cost-cutting efforts such as IT consolidation and workforce efficiency a reality. The inclusion of the Riverbed Optimization System in the HP ProCurve ONE gives customers moving to next-generation data center models a solution that can reduce costs and the complexity of network management, while improving application performance and employee productivity."

HP ProCurve ONE allows customers to choose from a selection of market-leading applications and to integrate them with their networks, having the confidence that the solution has been pre-tested. To educate and support enterprises on best practices, Riverbed and HP ProCurve plan to jointly market and sell their existing solutions.

"To help customers address the increased pace of change within their businesses, HP ProCurve is combining its own technology with some of the most innovative, respected and visionary companies in the world," said Marius Haas, senior vice president and general manager, HP ProCurve. "The integration of Riverbed’s WAN optimization with HP ProCurve infrastructure provides customers with a reliable solution for distributed enterprise environments that addresses their changing data center needs and can increase the efficiency of network applications."