Cloud Steelhead

The Riverbed® Cloud Steelhead® brings Riverbed's class leading WAN optimisation to public cloud computing environments with a pricing model that cloud users will be comfortable with.

Whether Public, private, or hybrid cloud environments, users face familiar performance limitations inherent in today’s applications and networks: Latency and bandwidth constraints combined with application and network performance issues.  Cloud Steelhead accelerates both the migration of data and applications to the cloud, combined with faster access to that data for any client via DC, branch office or mobile worker. Compatibility with Amazon Web Services and ESX-based cloud environments eliminate vendor lock-in by giving organisations the freedom to move between cloud providers with ease.

Cloud Steelhead offers a number of features to help ensure a smooth transition and user experience across the board.

Transparent cloud interception:

The Cloud Steelhead Discovery Agent simplifies the way in which WAN optimisation can be integrated into the highly automated, virtualised environments of the cloud where the physical location of a company’s server might change at any time. With this new form of cloud interception, servers that are authorised to leverage WAN optimisation will redirect connections to the appropriate Cloud Steelhead, even if server IP addresses or subnets change, allowing organisations to take advantage of the flexibility of the cloud without concern for performance.

Flexible cloud pricing model:

The Cloud Steelhead features a subscription-based pricing model to provide cloud-like economics for WAN optimisation. Riverbed offers monthly subscriptions with term commitments as short as six months, which allows customers who utilise Cloud Steelhead to shift from high capital expenditures to operation expenditures for their WAN optimisation requirements.

Simple, portal-based management:

The Riverbed Cloud Portal allows organisations to connect to their cloud provider and deploy a Cloud Steelhead instance in just a few clicks. It also simplifies deployment, management, licensing, and allows instant upgrades of Cloud Steelhead instances.

Elastic sizing and easy cloning:

Cloud Steelhead instances can easily be upgraded between models and administrators can use their existing settings and configurations to bring new Cloud Steelhead instances online quickly and easily. This elastic sizing and easy cloning make it possible for organisations to take advantage of the scale-as-you-go infrastructure opportunity of the public cloud.

Cloud Steelhead instances interoperate with Steelhead appliances, Virtual Steelhead, and Steelhead Mobile to offer organisations the flexibility to provide “anywhere acceleration” of enterprise data and applications in private, hybrid, and public cloud environments