Riverbed reveals cloud service plans

Riverbed will base the first web service around its Steelhead appliance

Wide-area network (WAN) specialist Riverbed Technologies has revealed plans for a new service directed at web services.

The new public cloud platform is designed to speed up the performance of applications and storage platforms based on the web. While no pricing or release dates have been given, the company said that the first service would be based on its Steelhead appliance.

Steelhead is currently offered to enterprises as a WAN optimisation tool. The appliance manages incoming and outgoing traffic to help speed up application performance for users connecting from outside the local network.

Riverbed senior product marketing director Apura Davé explained that the cloud service essentially removes the software layer from Steelhead and optimises it for web usage.

"It is a natural extension of what we are doing today," he said. "Just like you were freed from design constraints when you were in your private cloud, you can now be free on the public cloud."

In addition to optimising application performance, Riverbed is planning a service to speed up the performance of cloud-based storage systems.

This would allow companies to use iSCSI storage setups separate from their local networks. Riverbed believes that the system will open up new markets for cloud storage by speeding up performance and reliability for larger storage operations.

Davé explained that the company's aim is to eliminate the need for storage to be directly connected to the LAN. In doing so, he suggested that companies would be able to use cloud storage services while keeping the applications stored on the local network.

"This idea will propagate new ways of designing systems because they are no longer required to have their apps and storage in the same place," he said.