Granite is a technology that empowers businesses of all sizes to remove servers and data from branch offices and centralize them in the secure data center-without sacrificing user experience. This new architectural approach makes it possible to centralize backup operations and get data out of high-risk locations, while increasing agility and lowering the costs of managing remote office IT. To succeed in this dynamic environment, IT leaders need agility, security and control, while business users demand performance. Granite delivers these benefits in a single solution.
This announcement includes new Granite 2.5 software that adds support for Fibre Channel to its existing iSCSI support, enabling Granite solutions to now support over 90% of the current enterprise-class storage array market. Granite 2.5 also improves data protection with automated snapshots and simplified support for existing data-center class backup and recovery software. This news builds upon EMC E-Lab™ qualifying Granite with EMC VMAX® in 2012 and the recently completed EMC E-Lab qualification of Granite with EMC VNX® in June 2013. The performance of Granite 2.5 can be further enhanced with the addition of the new, purpose-built Steelhead EX 1360 model appliance, on which Granite can be hosted. The Steelhead EX 1360 model appliance offers enterprises greater capacity and performance for consolidating larger data stores back to the data center. Granite 2.5 and the Steelhead EX 1360 model appliance together deliver an enterprise-class solution for server and data consolidation that allow organizations to deploy any application to any location with high performance and reliability.
"Data growth and infrastructure shifts continue to hamper IT's ability to meet all protection, retention and compliance requirements. Addressing all these data protection challenges, requires a holistic approach," Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst at ESG. "Silos in technology add to the cost and complexity while reducing productivity and increasing risk of data loss. IT needs to give end users the tools they need to be successful while IT keeps oversight and control."
Extended Integration with Enterprise-Class Storage Arrays
Granite 2.5 software adds Fibre Channel support for the virtual Granite Core that extends integration with enterprise-class storage arrays, including those from EMC, NetApp and IBM. Leading analysts have found that nearly 70 percent of enterprises deploy Fibre Channel-based external disk solutions in 2013. Many organizations choose to deploy Fibre Channel-based storage solutions for their high speed, low latency transport capabilities and abilities to interconnect multiple storage devices to better use and share the storage within the datacenter. The addition of Fibre Channel storage solutions support to the already supported iSCSI in the data center means over 90% of the current enterprise-class storage array market is now supported by Granite solutions, providing greater flexibility for enterprises to meet the storage consolidation needs of branch offices with larger data sets.
"We see the expanded flexibility of Granite 2.5 in the data center as a big win - both from a storage and a data protection standpoint," said Mike Rinken, director of information technology at Mazzetti, an engineering design and consulting firm. "In our business where large CAD files have been moving toward a more collaborative parametric modeling data set, more resources for Granite Edge appliances make perfect sense. We can consolidate even more data and still make sure branch users get the local performance they need to be effective. We're excited to have the flexibility of utilizing Fibre Channel storage and how Riverbed is extending their storage footprint by offering more robust devices."
Simplification of Backup and Recovery
By consolidating data out of the branch and into the data center, Granite enables organizations to eliminate branch backup and recovery systems, shifting data protection operations to the secure data center and leaving data protection to skilled storage personnel. Granite 2.5 further simplifies data protection through enhanced support of industry-leading backup and recovery software solutions like Symantec NetBackup. Granite 2.5 also offers an enhanced centralized management user interface and simplified scheduling of hourly, daily or weekly application snapshots executed in the branch office and captured in the data center. As a result, Granite 2.5 delivers a single point of management for branch snapshot schedules simplifying data protection, resulting in improved recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTO/RPO).
"We've deployed Granite to help us manage our data and applications centrally and eliminate the hardware footprint at our data-intensive branches, which has translated to cost savings for us," said Rohit Tellis, director of information technology at Alamos Gold, a Canadian-based gold producer with exploration and development activities around the globe. "The data protection enhancements help even further and will give us the assurance that our centralized backup process is easy to manage."
New Steelhead EX 1360 Model Appliance
Remote and branch offices come in many sizes and with diverse application and data storage requirements. The Steelhead EX1360 model appliance consolidates larger data sets back to the data center while ensuring business continuity. The new model delivers local-speed experience for applications that need high-performance storage access such as high-volume transaction databases and geographic information systems (GIS) data modeling files that require high input/output per second (IOPS). In addition, the new Steelhead appliance also enables organizations with larger data workloads to increase the amount of data it can lock within the appliance cache, increasing the ability of branch offices with larger data sets to maintain productivity, even during WAN outages. The new Steelhead EX1360 model appliance enables a broader range of organizations to deploy Granite storage delivery solutions, even those branches with demanding application and heavy compute and storage workloads without fear of performance degradation or productivity loss.
Granite 2.5 and Steelhead EX 1360 model appliances are expected to be generally available in Q3 2013.
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Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements relating to the expected demand for and benefits from Riverbed's products and services, the potential release of future products, and the capabilities of such yet to be released products. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they do not fully materialize or prove incorrect, could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include our ability to react to trends and challenges in our business and the markets in which we operate; our ability to anticipate market needs or develop new or enhanced products to meet those needs; the adoption rate of our products; our ability to establish and maintain successful relationships with our distribution partners; our ability to compete in our industry; fluctuations in demand, sales cycles and prices for our products and services; shortages or price fluctuations in our supply chain; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; general political, economic and market conditions and events; and other risks and uncertainties described more fully in our documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. More information about these and other risks that may impact Riverbed's business are set forth in our Form 10-K filed with the SEC on May 3, 2013. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Any future product, feature or related specification that may be referenced in this release are for information purposes only and are not commitments to deliver any technology or enhancement. Riverbed reserves the right to modify future product plans at any time.
About Riverbed
Riverbed delivers application performance for the globally connected enterprise. With Riverbed, enterprises can successfully and intelligently implement strategic initiatives such as virtualization, consolidation, cloud computing, and disaster recovery without fear of compromising performance. By giving enterprises the platform they need to understand, optimize and consolidate their IT, Riverbed helps enterprises to build a fast, fluid and dynamic IT architecture that aligns with the business needs of the organization. Additional information about Riverbed (
