Websense and Riverbed Team

Riverbed Technology and Websense, Inc. have joined forces to offer enterprise customers Websense’s industry-leading Web security solutions combined with market-leading WAN optimization from Riverbed. The Websense Web Security solution will be offered on the Riverbed Services Platform (RSP), a feature of the Steelhead appliance. Websense offers Hosted Web Security today for the branch. The companies anticipate that Websense will offer its Hosted Web Security with Riverbed solutions in a "hybrid" mode at a later date to provide organizations with the most comprehensive, flexible and up-to-date security solutions.

Websense Web Security can be deployed on the RSP, a virtualized, extensible data services platform integrated with the Steelhead appliance hardware that allows customers to deploy multiple best-of-breed edge services that formerly required dedicated servers. By installing Websense Web Security software on Riverbed Steelhead appliances, organizations can consolidate WAN and Web security deployments, making their IT infrastructure faster, less expensive, and more secure. Customers can deploy these virtualized appliances, with services such as Websense Web Security, to further simplify IT infrastructure at branch and remote offices to reduce costs and operational overhead.

Riverbed Steelhead appliance customers will have the flexibility to deploy Websense Web Security as ‘on premise’ software, as a fully hosted service for remote workers, or, in an anticipated future release, through a hybrid hosted ‘software-as-a-service’ model. This flexibility will allow joint customers to leverage the power of software-as-a-service (SaaS) to deploy Web security ‘in the cloud’ for branch offices and remote users with Websense Hosted Web Security quickly and cost-effectively.

Websense will install seamlessly on the RSP to enable a ‘serverless’ deployment at the branch with the option of centralized reporting and policy management with the Websense V10000 secure Web gateway appliance in the central datacenter. The addition of the Websense V10000 secure Web gateway appliance allows content to be inspected in real-time with Riverbed optimizing the network traffic from the branch to the central datacenter. The enterprise achieves the best of both worlds: deep content inspection and scalability without sacrificing bandwidth or application acceleration.

"Unlike competitive offerings that promise strong application acceleration and security but don’t deliver convincingly on either front, the Websense and Riverbed integrated solution offers true best-of-breed and best-in-class security and application acceleration. As we move forward with the next phase of the relationship, customers will have the choice of appliance, software or SaaS deployment options," said Ray Kruck, senior director of business development, Websense, Inc. "The Websense and Riverbed joint offering is a powerful security solution architecture that protects essential information within Web-based applications and optimizes its access and delivery across the distributed enterprise."

"Through our virtualized RSP, enterprises can take advantage of core network services for branch offices, like best-of-breed Websense Web Security, and obtain extended value in the Riverbed Steelhead appliances," said Alan Saldich, vice president of product marketing at Riverbed. "Enterprises are executing on initiatives to reconcile the competing demands of IT consolidation and the growing distributed workforce. The RSP provides enterprises with a platform to address this challenge while cutting costs."

The Riverbed-Websense joint solution will be available through the companies’ respective resellers and sales forces – RSP from Riverbed and Websense Web Security through Websense. Websense Web Security running on the RSP is scheduled to be available in June of 2009. The future SaaS hybrid deployment options are scheduled to be available in the first quarter of 2010.