Riverbed’s asymmetric optimization strategy

Riverbed Technology has acquired Aptimize Limited & Zeus Technology

The acquisitions of the two companies will form the cornerstone of Riverbed’s asymmetric optimization strategy.

Aptimize's web content optimization is an innovative new technology area that allows customers to deliver both internal web applications, like SharePoint, and external web applications, like e-commerce websites, much faster. The Aptimize Website Accelerator eliminates massive inefficiencies in modern web applications by effectively transforming the content (javascript, cascading style sheets, images, etc.) in real time—instantly accelerating websites or intranets with a simple software installation on the Web server.

No extra hardware, code or browser changes are needed. Organizations that deploy the Aptimize solution have accelerated performance up to 400%. The Aptimize solution is often deployed in tandem with wide area network (WAN) optimization controllers and application delivery controllers (ADCs) to enhance performance.  

Aptimize goes beyond HTTP and TCP optimization and Web content optimization by transforming web content for faster delivery and a more responsive user experience. Aptimize’s technology reorders, merges and resizes content according to who is viewing it and from where. The end result is the application is delivered more effectively—up to four times faster—regardless of the platform used.

Zeus has a suite of application-acceleration and application-management products that fall under its Elastic Application Delivery umbrella, including a very popular load balancer. Leading cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Rackspace and Joyent all utilize Zeus’ technology to boost performance for their clouds.

Zeus approached product development differently by architecting a software-based [application delivery controller]. As a software-based solution, the Zeus vADC has many advantages over its hardware-originated peers: it is better suited for virtual and cloud environments, it can migrate across environments, and it can scale on demand.

Zeus really brings is the ability to accelerate new types of asymmetric applications, such as e-commerce or other customer-serving web applications. They’re called asymmetric because there aren’t appliances like Riverbed’s Steelhead appliance at both ends to boost performance, which means all the work is done on the application provider’s end.

Riverbed’s main competition are — Cisco and Citrix, primarily — although it has added F5 Networks on the ADC front. Greater market consolidation is expected to follow the Riverbed’s big play, as there are startups like Aryaka* and Infineta waiting in the wings with interesting technologies.

And Cisco, of course, could buy Citrix and/or F5 as it looks to reorganize around its strengths.

*Part of My watch list from last year…!

-Cheers

Low Cost IT will prevail...

As America's top outsourcing customers aim to restore profits amid rising oil prices and weak consumer demand, they are asking Indian IT tech firms to do more with less -


Billing rates for back office, software development, Remote Infrastructure Managment  and maintenance projects are already down by up to 15%.


Over the past few months US retailers Walmart and Home Depot , apart from Cisco , Ericsson and insurance firm AIG , have cut rates that could see profit margins for top tier IT companies like TCS , Infosys & Wipro and others fall by 1-3 % this quarter.


Also see September blog - We saw this coming almost 9 monts back ....
http://itservice-aj.blogspot.com/2010/09/low-cost-it-price-hike.html


-Cheers

2010-2011 State of SMB Cloud Services Market

Cloud-based SMB solutions for Business Intelligence & Analytics and Mobile IT will become more available and such investments will become increasingly important –

AMI-Partners.

SaaS bundled options for BI and analytics will increase by 25% annually through 2015 to reach $500 million.

1.    SMBs are becoming more aware of the benefits of mining their data for insights that can result in savings and competitive advantage.

2.    The availability of BI/SaaS, as part of a larger bundle, makes it a very attractive and cost-effective proposition.

There is increased interest in BI/analytics solutions bundled with cloud infrastructure, or infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and unified communications (UC) offerings.

Interest in application access, collaboration and cloud computing among SMBs is also increasing because of the ubiquity of broadband, mobility and smart devices. Cloud will also spur rapid adoption of mobile solutions.

In its 2010-2011 State of SMB Cloud Services Market, AMI-Partners found nearly two thirds of SMBs equip their employees with smart phones for business purposes, and tablet computers are also experiencing very rapid uptake. Some 8% of SMBs plan to purchase over 1.5 million tablets for their businesses in the next 12 months, the study found. Collaborative working services such as hosted document sharing and UC (conferencing, messaging and presence) are provoking the highest level of future interest.

The phenomenal expansion of mobile devices in the consumer world is having its effect on the SMB workplace. Users now want to take the things they can do in their private lives into their professional working practices: for example, accessing email, simple internet apps and social networking sites, or checking availability of colleagues – and to do so wherever and whenever they need to.

The cloud model’s flexible payment model (pay per user per month) makes access to technology affordable for resource-constrained small and medium businesses. Cloud also makes it faster and easier for SMBs to implement new technologies, including mobile, which is important as 70% of SMBs have no dedicated IT staff resources.

-Cheers