Riverbed Virtualizes WAN Management For MSPs

Riverbed Technology wants to make it easier for managed service providers (MSPs) to keep tabs on customer networks and offer WAN optimization as a managed service.

On Monday, the company unveiled its Central Management Console - Virtual Edition (CMC-VE), a software-only virtual version of its management console for multitenant central management of Riverbed Steelhead WAN optimization and application acceleration appliances. The CMC-VE runs on VMware's ESX platform.

"WAN optimization as a managed service can be a new revenue source and give MSPs a competitive advantage," said Kari Gerster, Riverbed's director of product marketing for verticals.

Currently, Riverbed is working with more than a dozen MSPs, many of which provide installation and maintenance service on Riverbed Steelhead appliances. The new CMC-VE lets MSPs add WAN optimization to their managed services portfolios and gives them a new recurring revenue stream along with the ability to manage hundreds to thousands of Riverbed boxes from one server.

Gerster said MSPs must purchase an instance management license per customer and management licenses to begin offering WAN optimization as a managed service.

Gerster said the CMC-VE, which is expected to be generally available in October, also lets MSPs reduce operational costs while adding visibility and scale to their offerings.

"We're using CMC to manage our customers' Steelhead appliance deployments in the easiest, most efficient way possible," said Jamey Hancock, director of channel strategies for IPsoft, a global managed IT service provider. "CMC-VE's capabilities allow us to improve visibility across customers' networks and provide valuable performance information, with greater flexibility and lower TCO for us and for them."

MSPs also can offer their customers savings by giving them WAN optimization and application acceleration as a service. Enterprises can optimize their bandwidth usage while consolidating infrastructure, which can reduce complexity and overhead.

While the number of CMC-VE instances and Steelhead appliances that can be managed on one physical server varies by each MSP's environment, Riverbed's own testing found that one reasonably sized server was able to run up to 50 CMC-VE instances, each of which was managing 50 Steelheads. In another scenario, Riverbed found the same server hosted six CMC-VE instances, each managing 500 Steelhead boxes, meaning 3,000 appliances were being managed from one server, Gerster said.

For licensing, MSPs can allocate management licenses among customers as business needs change. MSPs can buy additional management licenses for Steelhead boxes as needed and move license keys across CMC-VE instances. Essentially, that means MSPs have a license pool they can grow and allocate across customers as needed. MSPs also can re-allocate licenses to a customer that grows faster than expected.

"By introducing a multitenant platform and flexible licensing, MSPs can manage thousands of Steelhead appliances across multiple customer sites -- all from one physical server in their data center. In addition, CMC-VE can be deployed almost instantly when an MSP brings on a new customer -- without having to deploy additional hardware," said Alan Saldich, Riverbed's vice president of product marketing.

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