Riverbed Unveils edge-VSI Approach and New Granite Product Family

IT performance company Riverbed (News - Alert) Technology announced its new “edge virtual server infrastructure (edge-VSI),” a new architectural approach for edge servers.  The company also announced its new product -- Riverbed Granite -- that enables edge-VSI.

The new architectural approach allows IT to consolidate and manage edge server in data center, similar to what virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) does for desktops. However, unlike VDI, edge-VSI also delivers 20-50 percent lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

With the new approach, global companies can consolidate edge applications, servers and storage to the data center, while also delivering services to the edge of the enterprise as if they were local, the company said in a statement.  It also complements wide area network (WAN) optimization by accelerating performance of applications that is not addressed by the existing WAN optimization approaches.

The advantage of Edge Virtual Server Infrastructure approach is that it allows storage to be decoupled from its server over thousands of miles and work as if the storage were local, allowing companies to eliminate costly backup and recovery processes in remote locations. The approach helps them save up to 50 percent over traditional approaches, the company said.

While WAN optimization has benefitted companies for a variety of reasons including application acceleration, consolidation, bandwidth savings and business continuity/disaster recovery (BCDR), companies that require complete consolidation of global infrastructure still have a few servers left in the branch. Granite addresses this issue and helps enterprises achieve complete consolidation by removing those servers.

Granite consists of two components: Granite Core, a physical or virtual appliance in the data center, and Granite Edge, a service running on a Steelhead EX in the branch office. The combination of Steelhead EX and Granite allows organizations to take advantage of greater consolidation and centralization, along with powerful WAN optimization, virtual services platform and innovative block-storage optimization.

Granite Edge is also available as a standalone appliance.

“As we talk to our customers and ask them to whiteboard their ideal IT infrastructure they are highlighting the need to have centralized control of sprawled infrastructure,” said Eric Wolford, executive vice president and GM, products at Riverbed, in a statement. “The evolution of virtualization and consolidation, along with Granite, is allowing organizations to achieve this dream.”

Recently Riverbed released its fourth quarter and full year financial results. For the full year, revenue increased 32 percent while non-GAAP net income grew 62 percent over 2010, the company said in a press release.

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