Microsoft and Riverbed team up on SD-WAN

Performance optimisation vendor Riverbed Technology has partnered with Microsoft on a new range of SD-WAN and cloud edge infrastructure offerings.

The company revealed integrations between its SteelConnect SD-WAN solution and Microsoft’s Azure Virtual WAN, as well as making its SteelFusion offering available to Microsoft Hyper-V customers.

The integrated SteelConnect allows customers to automate local branch path steering for Office 365 via conventional internet broadband. Through the SteelConnect Manager policy engine, users can extend software-defined policies for steering traffic for selected applications or digital services, users or entire locations, as well as connect to Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN.

“Riverbed has a long-standing relationship with Microsoft and we remain committed to helping our mutual enterprise and government customers rethink possible in the digital era,” Riverbed senior vice president Paul O’Farrell said.

“We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Microsoft and together, helping customers drive innovation and stay ahead of the curve in today’s competitive IT landscape.”

Riverbed’s SteelFusion extensible services platform will provide Hyper-V customers the flexibility and agility to instantly deploy and centrally manage edge services, data and applications to any number of remote branches and sites.

SteelFusion combines Intelligent Storage Cache, WAN optimisation and virtualisation into a streamlined and centrally-managed platform for edge IT.

“Microsoft has always been a partner-led organidation and we value our strong relationship with Riverbed,” Microsoft CVP for One Commercial Partners Gavriella Schuster said.

“These new product enhancements further demonstrate our ongoing collaboration. As we continue to evolve our mutual offerings to provide increased value with advanced solutions, we enable our mutual customers to push boundaries towards a digital-first business.”