Cloud Computing


TMCnews Featured Article


June 08, 2011

Riverbed Expands Cloud Storage Gateway Product Family to Serve More Organizations, Including SMBs

By Madhubanti Rudra, TMCnet Contributor


In an effort to provide optimal protection for your data in the cloud, the leading WAN optimization and network traffic measurement solutions provider, Riverbed (News - Alert) Technology, introduced three new Riverbed Whitewater cloud storage gateway models. This expansion of the cloud data protection model is designed to benefit a wider range of organizations, including small and medium businesses (SMBs).

 

In a press release, Riverbed pointed out that the new Whitewater models 510 and 710 are purpose-built for SMBs, while the Whitewater model 2010 is designed for the mid-sized enterprise and large enterprises in certain cases.

 

By addressing the organizations’ data protection needs in a more efficient ways, the new models will be able to help organizations reduce operational burdens, costs, and complexity relating to the public cloud storage, Riverbed officials claimed in the release.

 

In addition to hardware-based cloud storage gateway appliances, Riverbed also offers a virtual version of its cloud storage gateway for data protection. The virtualized storage solutions allow the SMBs to avoid the costs relating to management of a secondary data center and pay only for storage as needed. In general the virtualization of data storage helps organizations accelerate recovery times, drive down the cost of backup and improve disaster recovery. As such cloud storage can be the practical answer to organizations faced with the challenges of handling the explosion in data growth in their IT environments.

 

In the press release, Riverbed explained that Whitewater cloud storage gateways provide fast, drop-in access to the major public cloud storage providers with local-like performance and connect directly to most popular backup tools. Thus, Whitewater cloud storage gateways enable organizations to easily and securely optimize their backup without changes to their existing infrastructure. Companies can reap the benefits of the public cloud's cost-effectiveness. The introduction of Whitewater cloud storage gateway models 510, 710 and 2010, enables Riverbed to reach out to a wider range of enterprises and federal agencies to help them meet storage requirements.

 

Whitewater cloud storage gateways deduplicate, compress and encrypt backup data sets before storing them both in the local server and in the cloud. In the event of a disaster, the secure cloud copy can be restored to any location and provides a strong DR solution without the need to purchase and maintain expensive hardware in remote locations, climed the officials with Riverbed.

 

“As many organizations are grappling with the explosion in data growth in their IT environments, cloud storage has emerged as an attractive data protection option. SMBs can quickly and easily add offsite protection capabilities, but only pay for storage as needed and without investing in or managing a secondary data center. As enterprises increase their use of server virtualization and implement other strategic IT initiatives, the growth and the sheer volume of data present a greater challenge for data protection strategies. With these new Whitewater models, Riverbed provides a data protection solution that helps organizations accelerate recovery times, drive down the cost of backup and improve disaster recovery (DR),” senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (News - Alert), Bob Laliberte, explained in a statement.

 

Riverbed is going to showcase its wide area network optimization, network performance management and satellite communications solutions for defense and intelligence agencies at the 2011 Defense Intelligence Information Enterprise Conference this week at the Hyatt Regency in Dallas. The theme of this year's DI2E conference is "Converging the Enterprise."

 

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.


Madhubanti Rudra is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by John Lahtinen