Cloud bouncing tackles latency
February 29, 2012
Akamai has around 95,000 servers in 71 countries which essentially optimise the performance of the internet. Its intelligent internet platform effectively acts as a network traffic cop, monitoring flows and congestion, and routing data by the most sensible route across the internet.
Riverbed Technology meanwhile is a software company which makes tools to optimise computing performance, especially over wide area computer networks.
The Steelhead Cloud Accelerator combines the smarts of both companies to allow what Riverbed describes as “cloud bouncing”. Companies which have a Steelhead appliance, which optimises wide area network performance, can subscribe to the Cloud Accelerator service and have their data “bounced” across the internet using the Akamai network to reduce latency and speed performance…
Initially the service is available for users of Google Apps, Salesforce.com and Microsoft Office 365.
According to Damien Murphy, systems engineering manager for Riverbed in ANZ, speaking at Kickstart on the Gold Coast earlier this week, the justification for IT managers investing in the system was in terms of the impact on bandwidth coasts and productivity.
“An 8 Mbyte PowerPoint can be transmitted 50 times faster,” he claimed.
The companies announced their intention to develop the service last May. Each company has integrated the other’s technology into their systems – so Steelheads feature Akamai smarts, and the Akamai platform recognises and accepts data routed via Steelheads.
The companies claim this is particularly important for hybrid clouds where companies might have some data in their own computer systems, where networking speed is traditionally handled by the Riverbed Steelhead, but also use some cloud applications where data has to travel rapidly across the internet – Akamai’s patch.
In a media release issued today the companies offered the example of offshore deepwater drilling company Seadrill which was using Office 365 in the cloud. However when employees logged on it could take two hours for mailboxes to be fully synchronised which had bandwidth constraints on the network.
Seadrill has been testing Steelhead Cloud Accelerator and claimed the response times had increased dramatically as a result.