Secure Computing, Riverbed forge multi-phased partnership
ConvergenceAsia staff
17/04/2008

Secure Computing, an enterprise gateway security provider, and Riverbed Technology, a wide-area data services (WDS) solutions company, have announced a multi-phased partnership that will provide customers with best-of-breed, comprehensive, and cost-effective technology solutions that enable customers to deliver accelerated data access to enterprise users while protecting critical information and infrastructure from security threats.

The partnership between Secure Computing and Riverbed takes advantage of the complementary capabilities of the companies’ technologies – Secure Computing’s preeminent gateway security technology and Riverbed WDS technology.

The partnership will be implemented in two phases. In phase-one the two companies will jointly offer their solutions through a select group of channel partners to address both WDS and web security to companies looking to both increase their application performance across the WAN and secure their gateways to the Internet.

Riverbed Steelhead appliances and Steelhead Mobile software enables application acceleration, the optimisation of bandwidth, and improved quality of service (QoS) and Secure Computing’s Secure Web will provide web security protection including anti-malware, reputation based URL filtering, and anti-spam.

“Companies have experienced rapid increases in network traffic as well as increases in file sizes and rich content, and that has negatively impacted the response times of business-critical applications,” said Alan Saldich, vice president of product marketing and alliances at Riverbed. “In addition to accelerating access to these applications, it is a logical extension to now enable third-party vendors, such as Secure Computing, to leverage Steelhead appliance deployments to offer best-of-breed solutions and services so our customers can reduce their costs, management headaches, and IT footprint.”

In phase-two of the partnership, Secure Computing’s Secure SnapGear firewall technology, its SmartFilter reputation-based web filtering and its TrustedSource global reputation-based antispam technology will be offered as a software module that can be run on the RiOS Services Platform (RSP).

With the emergence of Web 2.0, there’s been a dramatic increase in malware, requiring companies to thoroughly secure every connection to the Internet, said Atri Chatterjee, senior vice president of marketing, Secure Computing. “Wrapping security into other required functionalities like WAN optimisation and simplifying their management is a concept we think customers will quickly embrace.”

Companies that take advantage of the phase-one bundled offering now will be given the opportunity in phase-two to migrate to the equivalent stand-alone, integrated appliance in the future.

The multi-product bundle is scheduled to be available through channel partners in early May, and Secure Computing’s software module for the RSP is scheduled for availability in early 2009.

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