Riverbed Steelhead Cloud Accelerator Wins Best of Tech Ed Award

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Riverbed Technology RVBD +2.14% , the performance company, today announced that Riverbed Steelhead(R) Cloud Accelerator has been named the Best of TechEd Award winner in the Cloud Computing category. Steelhead Cloud Accelerator, developed by Riverbed(R) in partnership with Akamai(R) Technologies, provides a first-of-its-kind solution to accelerate software-as-a-service (SaaS) performance for Microsoft Office 365. Winners were announced during the Microsoft TechEd Conference, which took place at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla.

This award recognizes the innovation behind Steelhead Cloud Accelerator, which provides a complete solution to overcome the potential performance problems created by the distance between end users and their applications, problems that must be addressed to realize the full potential of SaaS…

News Facts

— The Best of TechEd 2012 awards recognize companies based on
innovation, strategic importance to the market, competitive advantage,
and exceptional value to customers. The judges reviewed 300 products
and services submitted for the award and chose 46 finalists to be
interviewed at the Microsoft TechEd North America 2012 Conference
before selecting winners in 15 categories.
— Steelhead Cloud Accelerator combines market-leading private wide area
network (WAN) optimization with best-of-breed public Internet
optimization to accelerate SaaS applications including Microsoft(R)
Office 365.
— Riverbed is a Microsoft ISV Gold Partner and committed to working with
Microsoft to enable organizations to accelerate business agility and
improve productivity while cutting costs. The collaboration between
Riverbed and Microsoft on many key Microsoft applications and
platforms, including SharePoint(R), Exchange and Office 365, are
enabling organizations to experience Microsoft enterprise software
solutions over the WAN and in the cloud as if they were local.
— Riverbed was the first WAN optimization vendor to provide an
application-layer protocol optimization for Exchange and collaborates
extensively with Microsoft teams. This relationship has led to
certifications, validations and participation in TAP (Technology
Access Program) programs. Among them include certification for WHQL,
participation in Protocol Optimization Licensing Program (POLP) and
validation for Windows Server 2008 R2. In June 2011, Riverbed was
named by Microsoft as an application acceleration hardware partner in
the worldwide network of Microsoft Technology Centers (MTCs).

Supporting Quotes

"As organizations embrace SaaS applications like Microsoft Office 365 for centralization, flexibility and cost savings, getting fast performance over the network is often a challenge. This recognition from Microsoft TechEd validates the value of Steelhead Cloud Accelerator for organizations seeking to overcome the unpredictable performance of hybrid cloud networks. By delivering local-like access to applications in the cloud, organizations can take advantage of the elasticity and cost savings promised by SaaS, the fastest growing segment of cloud computing." – Eric Wolford, executive vice president and general manager, products group at Riverbed

"Riverbed Steelhead Cloud Accelerator is a one-of-a-kind Software as a Service (SaaS) application accelerator for Office 365, Google Apps, and Salesforce.com that provides dramatic performance gains compared with non-optimized WAN connections. By making a remote cloud resource appear to be a fast local network resource, Steelhead Cloud Accelerator eliminates the performance bottleneck at the very heart of public and hybrid cloud computing." – Jason Bovberg, senior editor of Windows IT Pro wrote in an article published on June 15