Event Summary
In its Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS) 7.0 software, Riverbed broadened the appeal of its WAN performance booster with acceleration for HTTP-based video, UDP applications, VDI, and integrated network performance monitoring and IPv6. The integration of its Cascade Shark packet capture and analysis allows enterprises to troubleshoot branch office networking problems remotely, without the need to install separate hardware probes.
Analytical SummaryPerspective
Positive on the release of Riverbed’s RiOS 7.0 software update, because it greatly broadens the appeal of Riverbed’s WAN optimization solutions, which already offered great feature-richness. The mixed bag of enhancements demonstrates Riverbed’s intent to focus on meeting customer requirements and reinforce its technology as well as market leadership.
Vendor Importance
Moderate to Riverbed, because the long list of new (and in some cases market-leading) enhancements essentially polish the crown jewels of Riverbed’s business to a high gloss, showing off even more facets of those gems. The enhancements also allow Riverbed to better capitalize on acquisitions by integrating acquired technologies into its Steelhead appliances, thereby increasing their value. Several new functions such as UDP acceleration, expanded video support, and VDI help to expand the addressable market for its Steelhead appliances.
Market Impact
High on the WAN optimization market, because in total, the wide range of new features could very likely spur even greater distance between Riverbed and its next closest rivals. Riverbed has already opened up a large lead in its dominance in the WAN optimization market, and these enhancements will only serve to extend that.
Competitive StrengthsCompetitive Positives
• Despite the fact that Riverbed did not release its UDP support when promised, it is still fairly unique in offering that acceleration; Cisco and Blue Coat do not yet have such support in their WAN optimization appliances. This gives Riverbed time-to-market advantages over its chief rivals and addresses an underserved part of the market for optimizing disaster recovery services, some VDI, and other UPD-based applications.
• Riverbed continues to demonstrate what has made it the dominant WAN optimization provider by a large margin; that is its continued focus on making its appliances among the most feature-rich in the market by adding capabilities important to its large and growing base of customers.
• Riverbed is positioning its Steelhead WAN optimization line to capitalize on the growing interest in VDI by expanding its already broad support for Citrix VMware and Microsoft VDI environments to include optimization for Citrix ICA over SSL encrypted links, as well as a new client drive mapping feature that enables the acceleration of content accessed directly from thin clients including thumb drives.
• Over the last several quarters, Riverbed has pulled away from its major competitors, now commanding just over half of the market and twice the share of its next closest competitor. With such strong momentum at its back, and its continued aggressive push to deliver consistent feature expansion based on customer requirements, Riverbed is well positioned to increase its dominance.
• Riverbed continues to demonstrate what has made it the dominant WAN optimization provider by a large margin; that is its continued focus on making its appliances among the most feature-rich in the market by adding capabilities important to its large and growing base of customers.
• Riverbed is positioning its Steelhead WAN optimization line to capitalize on the growing interest in VDI by expanding its already broad support for Citrix VMware and Microsoft VDI environments to include optimization for Citrix ICA over SSL encrypted links, as well as a new client drive mapping feature that enables the acceleration of content accessed directly from thin clients including thumb drives.
• Over the last several quarters, Riverbed has pulled away from its major competitors, now commanding just over half of the market and twice the share of its next closest competitor. With such strong momentum at its back, and its continued aggressive push to deliver consistent feature expansion based on customer requirements, Riverbed is well positioned to increase its dominance.
Competitive WeaknessesCompetitive Concerns
• Riverbed was due to deliver UDP acceleration and application visibility on the Steelhead appliances in H1 2011. The late delivery of those capabilities could cause it to lose time-to-market advantages and raise the ire of customers counting on that functionality earlier.
• Cisco has carved out a strong position in optimizing performance for VDI and video with the 4.4 release of its WAAS software, which includes context-aware data redundancy elimination features focused specifically on VDI and video traffic (seeCisco Looks to VDI and Video to Gain Advantage in WAN Optimization Market, October 7, 2011). It received good initial validation from third-party reviewers. Its renewed push in VDI traffic optimization will give Riverbed a run for its money.
• Despite the addition of new security features in RiOS 7.0, Riverbed does not deliver the same level of security that rival Blue Coat can offer by virtue of its existing WAN security business. Blue Coat recently integrated key Web security in its MACH 5 appliances that exploits the company’s new cloud-based Web security service, eliminating the need to backhaul Web traffic to a central location from remote locations.
• Cisco has carved out a strong position in optimizing performance for VDI and video with the 4.4 release of its WAAS software, which includes context-aware data redundancy elimination features focused specifically on VDI and video traffic (see
• Despite the addition of new security features in RiOS 7.0, Riverbed does not deliver the same level of security that rival Blue Coat can offer by virtue of its existing WAN security business. Blue Coat recently integrated key Web security in its MACH 5 appliances that exploits the company’s new cloud-based Web security service, eliminating the need to backhaul Web traffic to a central location from remote locations.
Response & Recommendations
• If Cisco’s context-aware DRE (data redundancy elimination) does in fact improve the user experience, especially compared to Riverbed’s VDI and video optimization, Cisco should hire third-party testers to validate that advantage. Cisco is hanging its WAN optimization hat on that innovation, and it should be prepared to demonstrate its superiority (if that exists) over the market leader.
• Once Blue Coat develops a customer base for its new Web security services integration with its MACH 5 WAN optimization appliances, it should highlight the benefits in customer case studies, looking for ways to quantify the benefits of that integration and publicizing those metrics. That integration gives Blue Coat good differentiation as well as a good cloud story, something which Riverbed does not yet have.
• Cisco needs to quash rumors that it will abandon its WAAS appliance line in favor of integrated router features/blades if it is to continue to compete successfully against Riverbed. If Cisco is committed to being a top-tier competitor in the WAN optimization market, it needs to demonstrate that commitment clearly. One of the ways to do that is to maintain better feature parity with market leader Riverbed.
• A little paranoia can be a good thing, if it motivates an organization to be vigilant for shifts in market dynamics. Riverbed has done a great job of focusing on customer requirements, but its success could blind it to subtle changes in market demands. Competitive pricing and responsiveness to partners and prospects should not be sacrificed as Riverbed continues to pull away from its nearest competitors.
• Once Blue Coat develops a customer base for its new Web security services integration with its MACH 5 WAN optimization appliances, it should highlight the benefits in customer case studies, looking for ways to quantify the benefits of that integration and publicizing those metrics. That integration gives Blue Coat good differentiation as well as a good cloud story, something which Riverbed does not yet have.
• Cisco needs to quash rumors that it will abandon its WAAS appliance line in favor of integrated router features/blades if it is to continue to compete successfully against Riverbed. If Cisco is committed to being a top-tier competitor in the WAN optimization market, it needs to demonstrate that commitment clearly. One of the ways to do that is to maintain better feature parity with market leader Riverbed.
• A little paranoia can be a good thing, if it motivates an organization to be vigilant for shifts in market dynamics. Riverbed has done a great job of focusing on customer requirements, but its success could blind it to subtle changes in market demands. Competitive pricing and responsiveness to partners and prospects should not be sacrificed as Riverbed continues to pull away from its nearest competitors.
Buyer Actions
• It is only a matter of time before latency-sensitive VDI pervades the enterprise network, and video has already achieved mainstream status as a tool for a variety of enterprise activities. Network operators should verse themselves on how those applications behave across the network, what their requirements are in terms of latency, and what options exist to better support them across far-flung enterprises.
• Existing Riverbed customers should be heartened by the wide range of new features Riverbed has included in the latest RiOS release (7.0). Its ‘something for everyone’ update reflects the diversity in Riverbed’s broad customer base and demonstrates the vendor’s commitment to its customers.
• Prospects looking to add WAN optimization to their networks, especially to support new latency-sensitive applications traffic such as VDI and video, should evaluate the different approaches to accelerating those newer traffic types. Each competitor brings unique techniques to the battle, along with differentiated feature sets.
• Existing Riverbed customers should be heartened by the wide range of new features Riverbed has included in the latest RiOS release (7.0). Its ‘something for everyone’ update reflects the diversity in Riverbed’s broad customer base and demonstrates the vendor’s commitment to its customers.
• Prospects looking to add WAN optimization to their networks, especially to support new latency-sensitive applications traffic such as VDI and video, should evaluate the different approaches to accelerating those newer traffic types. Each competitor brings unique techniques to the battle, along with differentiated feature sets.
Analytical Perspective
Borrowing a page from rival Cisco, Riverbed is doing a good job of integrating acquired technologies into its Steelhead appliances, thereby increasing the value of the products. Just as Cisco has integrated a variety of network services into its switches and routers, so too is Riverbed integrating acquired technologies such as its Cascade Shark packet capture and network performance management as well as Skipware satellite communications optimization into RiOS 7.0. At the same time, RiOS 7.0 addresses a wide range of customer requirements that reflect the diversity of its customer base, enabling Riverbed to broaden the appeal of its Steelhead appliances. New UDP optimization now enables Riverbed to optimize bulk file transfers used in replication or disaster recovery applications as well as some VDI implementations, such as VMware’s PCoIP protocol for VMware View. At the same time, all major WAN optimization providers recognize the new opportunities for expanding the addressable market with the enterprise adoption of video as a tool for a variety of purposes, including training, employee communications, marketing, and more. Chief rivals Cisco and Blue Coat have recently expanded their video optimization techniques. Blue Coat, in particular, added stream-splitting for Adobe Flash just one month earlier; it had already delivered the ability to cache Microsoft Silverlight content locally, although it does not claim to provide stream-splitting or application layer multicasting for Silverlight yet.
All this comes at a time when Riverbed is distancing itself from its major rivals. By some estimates, Riverbed owns just over 50% of the WAN optimization market, which is about twice that of its next major rival, Cisco Systems. That is up from about 34% of the market just two years ago. Common wisdom suggests that WAN optimization is a three-horse race between Riverbed, Cisco, and Blue Coat, despite the healthy number of smaller rivals still competing in the market. Of course, as the clear market leader, Riverbed has a very large bull’s eye on its back, and competitors will be keen to take advantage of any missteps it makes. At the same time, nervous investors will keep the pure-play focused to some extent on the short term, although Riverbed has demonstrated good long-term vision in its acquisitions and partnerships.
All this comes at a time when Riverbed is distancing itself from its major rivals. By some estimates, Riverbed owns just over 50% of the WAN optimization market, which is about twice that of its next major rival, Cisco Systems. That is up from about 34% of the market just two years ago. Common wisdom suggests that WAN optimization is a three-horse race between Riverbed, Cisco, and Blue Coat, despite the healthy number of smaller rivals still competing in the market. Of course, as the clear market leader, Riverbed has a very large bull’s eye on its back, and competitors will be keen to take advantage of any missteps it makes. At the same time, nervous investors will keep the pure-play focused to some extent on the short term, although Riverbed has demonstrated good long-term vision in its acquisitions and partnerships.
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