Riverbed launches AI-powered observability platform

Riverbed today announced its Riverbed Platform that includes observability capabilities to provide enterprise network managers with visibility into blind spots around public cloud, zero trust, and SD-WAN architectures as well as remote work environments.

The Riverbed Platform enables IT organizations to collect, analyze, automate, and report on data aggregated across complex environments to optimize digital experiences for end users and customers. Using AIOps (artificial intelligence for IT operations) to conduct correlation and analysis, the Riverbed Platform can conduct root-cause identification and kick off automated remediations.

Riverbed launched the platform with about 35 pre-built application and software integrations, which the company says reflects the open platform and will more quickly enable IT teams to gain value in their existing environments.

“Customers are challenged with improving the digital experience, simplifying their management environment and implementing AI that works and scales,” said Dave Donatelli, CEO at Riverbed, in a statement. “To address this, Riverbed has invested in our core competencies of data collection and AI, and today we’re launching the most advanced AI-powered observability platform to optimize digital experiences, along with solutions that provide new levels of visibility into network blind spots and enterprise-owned mobile devices.”

Among the updates, Riverbed announced:

• Riverbed Aternity Mobile: A mobile monitoring tool that increases employee productivity by proactively identifying performance issues on enterprise-provided mobile devices and taking remediation actions.
• Riverbed NPM+: The first in a series of SaaS-delivered network performance management (NPM) services that overcome traditional network blind spots by extending packet visibility to network locations where monitoring was previously not possible.
• Riverbed NetProfiler: A tool that provides real-time visibility into network traffic and application performance that now is also able to monitor SD-WAN health and performance.

Riverbed also updated its SaaS-based AIOps service Riverbed IQ 2.0, which uses AI-powered automation to contextualize and correlate real data across IT to prevent, identify, and resolve performance and other issues. Riverbed IQ 2.0 filters out noise and reduces alerts to those only most relevant to IT by using Riverbed Data Store, which connects data sources into a data repository, and Topology Viewer, which generates a dynamic map of connected devices and dependencies in an environment.

With the observability enhancements, Riverbed unveiled its Riverbed Unified Agent, which promises to streamline the deployment and management of observability products with a single software agent. The unified agent will enable enterprise network managers to adopt Riverbed modules without deploying more software or having to maintain an additional component to collect and report on data across the environment.

“The universal agent reduces the amount of administrative overhead customers would have if they were using both NPM+ and Aternity,” says Shamus McGillicuddy, research director for the network management practice at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).

“Right now, the main alternative to NPM+ is a synthetic network monitoring solution, such as those offered by Cisco ThousandEyes, Broadcom AppNeta, and Catchpoint. Let’s say Riverbed Aternity customers want to adopt one of these competitors for a synthetic solution. To get the client-side perspective from those alternative solutions, customers would have to deploy a second agent on devices,” McGillicuddy says.

“At some point, you want to limit the number of agents you’re running on a device to mitigate management complexity, but also to avoid overtaxing resources of client devices. The Universal Agent streamlines agent management and agent overhead.”

With a unified agent, Riverbed is reducing the overhead needed to gain visibility across myriad devices while also reporting on data needed to improve digital experiences. The Riverbed Unified Agent installs on managed devices, it becomes an enabler for module features, and the technology can be automatically updated without human intervention.

By providing visibility into an extended environment, Riverbed is giving network managers a means to better manage cloud applications and services as well as remote workers.

“Riverbed is making improvements to existing products that customers are already using (like the NetProfiler NPM solution and the AIOps solution (IQ). It’s also introducing a new SaaS-based product (NPM+) that addresses a critical need for organizations that support cloud apps and remote workers. It also helps with ZTNA observability,” EMA’s McGillicuddy explains. “NPM+ provides a compelling agent-based digital experience management capability.”

These capabilities align with what enterprise IT teams say they need and plan to invest in, according to McGillicuddy. “Last year my research found that 87% of NetOps teams have allocated budget to improve how they manage experience for remote workers. Also, the updates to Riverbed IQ improve how customers can create and run automated workflows in response to AI-derived insights. Last year, 57% of NetOps teams told me they want no-code interfaces such as this for creating runbook automation on their AIOps platforms.”

Riverbed’s news is promising for customers, as it is providing real data that can provide insights into the performance of network components, applications, and services. Still, considering the complex environments network teams are tasked to monitor and optimize, Riverbed and others could be doing more to support customers. For instance, there’s opportunity for Riverbed and its competitors to add integrations and support for the technologies organizations are investing in now, such as secure access service edge (SASE):

“If it works as advertised, NPM+ should produce quality telemetry. It’s passively monitoring real network connections, which means IT will get data about network and application sessions,” McGillicuddy says. “Riverbed should expand the number of SD-WAN solutions supported by NetProfiler. Also, they should position NPM+ next to NetProfiler as a solution that provides SD-WAN and SASE observability. NetOps teams struggle with visibility into SASE points of presence, and NPM+ has the potential to solve that issue. A combined NetProfiler/NPM+ solution could be a powerful toolset for SD-WAN/SASE operations.”

The Riverbed Platform, NPM+, NetProfiler, and all the capabilities announced with this launch are generally available now.