Riverbed Releases SteelFusion 5.0, Adds Support for NAS Storage

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Riverbed Technology, the application performance company, recently announced the launch of Riverbed® SteelFusion™ 5.0 with support for network-attached storage (NAS). This product can enhance the flexibility and convenience of managing remote and branch office IT. Riverbed SteelFusion is the only solution that can "project" storage resources from the data center or cloud to remote offices, helping to reduce the costs associated with managing remote storage silos and backup infrastructure and eliminate security risks. Riverbed also announced that SteelFusion has more than 1,000 customers, and it will use a software-defined approach to help organizations around the world transform the way they manage remote branch IT infrastructure, providing the security, agility and cost-effectiveness required for modern enterprises.

“Riverbed is proud to deliver a software-defined branch office solution with SteelFusion 5.0 that provides a cloud-grade experience for managing remote office and branch IT infrastructure,” said Paul O’Farrell, senior vice president and general manager of SteelHead, SteelFusion and SteelConnect at Riverbed. “With SteelFusion, organizations of all sizes can benefit from a scalable and software-defined service offering that provides unprecedented flexibility, control and automation for managing remote office IT infrastructure. With the addition of data center NAS support, in addition to our existing support for storage area networks (SANs) and object-based storage, our customers now have complete flexibility to extend the power, security and protection of data center and cloud-based storage to wherever they do business.”

In today's cloud-centric digital world, IT organizations are facing new challenges in remote and branch office locations. IT is tasked with increasing business agility, reducing operating costs, ensuring information security and application performance, while avoiding the unprecedented complexity of adopting cloud computing and hybrid IT. SteelFusion simplifies and changes the way IT departments manage remote IT infrastructure, centralizing the management of remote data and corresponding backup and recovery procedures. It has the unique ability to project storage and virtual services from a centrally managed data center or cloud to remote locations. SteelFusion provides IT with a scalable approach to deploy and manage remote applications and services at any number of business locations.

With SteelFusion 5.0, organizations and service providers at all levels can use this software-defined branch office solution in a variety of ways based on their own characteristics, extending traditional on-premises data center storage (SAN, NAS), private cloud (software-defined storage) or public cloud (object) scenarios. NAS storage systems remain an important and attractive storage backend in VMware environments. A large number of enterprise IT departments continue to use a variety of storage solutions (data block, file and object) combinations. SteelFusion 5.0 supports all storage protocols in the data center or cloud, while extending them to the edge in a unified central operating mode, bringing more flexibility.

SteelFusion has been favored by more than a thousand customers around the world

SteelFusion has grown rapidly over the past few years and now has more than 1,000 customers. Organizations around the world are taking advantage of software-defined approaches to managing remote and branch office IT. By purchasing SteelFusion, the State of Kentucky not only saved $900,000 in additional expenses, but also enabled office staff to focus on more strategic projects instead of spending time dealing with backups. Kentucky also eliminated the potential risk of loss of valuable government project data through centralized backup.

“We modernized our infrastructure and backed it up,” said Travis Wagers, information systems manager for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s IT Office. “If we want to install a new server, we don’t have to buy a new server and wait for it to arrive. By leveraging our existing virtual machines, we can reduce deployment time significantly. So our infrastructure is future-proof.”

Kentucky is just one example of a number of leading industry groups around the world that are reaping the benefits of Riverbed SteelFusion.

• Riverbed SteelFusion helps European insurance provider CBP gain control over IT with a software-defined branch approach - European insurance provider CBP uses SteelFusion to improve application performance, enhance data security, and enable server virtualization across its European subsidiaries
• Riverbed Helps Energy Company Engen Centralize Remote and Branch Office IT, Accelerate Application Performance - Global energy company Engen uses SteelFusion to centralize remote and branch office IT management, increasing productivity, improving backup and increasing data security for the multinational enterprise
• Riverbed helps Swedish manufacturing company Roxtec open and manage branch offices to keep pace with business growth - Swedish manufacturing company Roxtec deploys SteelFusion to improve IT efficiency and achieve rapid growth of 15% to 20% per year
• Drakes Supermarkets Reduces Downtime and Streamlines Backup and Recovery for More Than 50 Stores with Riverbed SteelFusion - Riverbed SteelFusion significantly reduces Drakes Supermarkets downtime and provides instant recovery for its retail branches. The ability to instantly restore remote sites can save Drakes up to $100,000 per outage

“We are seeing IT organizations rapidly evolving to hybrid cloud architectures, with real opportunities to improve operations far beyond the centralized data center core and remote edge – often encompassing hundreds, if not thousands, of enterprise locations,” said Terri McClure, senior analyst at ESG. “As enterprises continue to strive for comprehensive digital transformation, new challenges are emerging that pose issues that can hinder IT’s ability to ensure agility, security, and application performance across the enterprise. Riverbed is addressing these edge IT challenges with its software-defined branch office solution with SteelFusion, helping enterprises simplify, standardize, and converge their remote IT infrastructure and operations – improving time to value and overall security while keeping IT agile enough to keep pace with today’s accelerating enterprise digitization.”

The SteelFusion platform will be available in late March 2017.