Riverbed Technology, an IT infrastructure performance company for networks, applications and storage, has announced new Steelhead Mobile capabilities that will allow organisations of all sizes to deploy a mobile WAN optimisation solution with increased scalability, speed and simplicity. In this release, Riverbed is introducing Steelhead Mobile Controller-Virtual Edition (SMC-VE), increased capacity for the Steelhead Mobile Controller (SMC) appliance, and additional application-level latency optimisation for Steelhead Mobile. Organisations can take advantage of these new features to provide their mobile workforce with LAN-like access to corporate files and applications.
Scalability: Empowering Organisations of Any Size
Mobile WAN optimisation can help almost any company improve the performance of critical applications for remote workers while also cutting corporate IT costs. To meet the needs of every size organisation, Riverbed has expanded the scalability of its Steelhead Mobile solution, including the new SMC-VE and additional licence capacity on the appliance, making its solutions available to a broader set of customers.
Steelhead Mobile Controller - Virtual Edition
In this release, Riverbed is introducing SMC-VE, which will make enterprise-grade acceleration more accessible to SMEs. In addition, larger organisations that have a small number of mobile workers will be able to implement cost-effective deployments of Steelhead Mobile.
SMC-VE is a virtual package deployed on the Riverbed Services Platform (RSP), a virtualised platform that resides on the Steelhead appliance that provides customers with the capability to run up to five additional services and applications in a protected partition on the Steelhead appliance. By running SMC-VE within the RSP, Riverbed offers enterprises the opportunity to obtain all of the same benefits of Steelhead Mobile while eliminating the need to purchase additional hardware. Enterprises can purchase as few as 10 initial Steelhead Mobile licences, up to a total capacity of 100 licences, and manage those concurrent licences with SMC-VE running within the RSP to make it easier to cost-effectively target mobile users in environments where the additional scale of the SMC is unnecessary.
Steelhead Mobile Controller: Increased Capacity
In addition to reaching smaller organisations with the SMC-VE, Riverbed is increasing the total licence capacity of the appliance-based SMC for large enterprises. The SMC is now capable of managing 2,000 additional licences for a total of 4,000 licences—no additional hardware is required.
Lotus Notes Acceleration for Mobile Workers
In this release, Riverbed is also announcing support for application layer Lotus Notes acceleration for mobile users. This capability improves the speed at which mobile employees can access large e-mail attachments and manage calendaring, resulting in increased collaboration across dispersed geographical locations.
SMC-VE and the above-mentioned enhancements to Steelhead Mobile are generally available now.