Jerry Kennelly, president and CEO of Riverbed Technology, said: "Running the RSP on VMware puts us in a position to offer our customers the most robust and widely-deployed virtualisation software available right on our Steelhead platform. Together, VMware and Riverbed will enable server-less remote office computing, which drives IT efficiencies, while providing our customers with high performance computing and productivity for all their knowledge workers, wherever they are."

With VMware as the underlying virtualisation platform within RSP, Riverbed will be able to offer up to five virtual appliances on each Steelhead appliance. Riverbed will work with VMware to encourage Riverbed Technology Alliance (RTA) partners to join the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program and to validate RSP virtual appliances to help ensure seamless integration with VMware Infrastructure 3, the industry-leading virtualisation and management suite.

RSP virtual appliances will also be listed on the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace—the industry's leading online directory of virtual appliances, with more than 900 available for download. The initial third-party applications and services qualified on the new VMware-powered RSP are:

· Secure Computing Secure SnapGear firewall technology

Infoblox NIOS software for DNS/DHCP/IPAM

Wowza media server for streaming media

Print services
 
In addition, customers will be able to place their own software modules, such as VMDKs, Microsoft Windows, etc. on the RSP.

While RSP adoption will be positioned to gain momentum as a platform for delivering these virtualized edge data services to remote offices, Riverbed will continue to expand the availability of newer applications - such as application-level sensors, remote management and other enterprise applications that need a software presence in the remote office - by distributing them as virtual appliances.

Shekar Ayyar, vice president of infrastructure alliances at VMware, said: "VMware is excited that Riverbed has based RSP on the VMware virtualisation platform. The combined solution will allow customers to more easily and efficiently extend their virtualised environments into their branch offices so they can deploy additional services on Riverbed appliances without compromising speed, availability and productivity."

Riverbed Steelhead appliances help enterprises dramatically speed up collaboration and move data across VMware environments, while at the same time allowing them to centralise and consolidate IT resources – all without sacrificing performance.