In order to help joint customers improve the configuration and management of their enterprise WDS infrastructure, an alliance with Riverbed Technology, the technology and market leader in wide-area data services (WDS), has been announced by a leading provider of open network management software, AlterPoint, Inc. (http://www.alterpoint.com ).

AlterPoint, through the partnership, will join the Riverbed Technology Alliance, demonstrating interoperability of NetworkAuthority, AlterPoint’s network management solution, with Riverbed® Steelhead® appliances. The two companies will publish management components on a community-based network management exchange where users can download, develop and share content including network management scripts, change policies, templates, vulnerabilities, adaptors, plug-ins and report templates, called ZipForge.

Vice president of product marketing and alliances at Riverbed, Alan Saldich, says: “Our goal is to help companies improve the performance of their applications, get more out of their current infrastructure, and consolidate IT assets from remote offices to the data center.” Alan added: “This means joint customers will be able to manage all of the devices in their multi-vendor networks without resorting to proprietary and vendor-specific management systems.”

The AlterPoint-Riverbed collaboration will provide the following capabilities:

    * Automated Configuration Management - by providing real-time change detection; flagging out-of-policy changes and vulnerabilities; and performing real-time, automated remediation, ensures consistent configuration policies across Steelhead devices.
    * Troubleshooting - identifies misconfigured Steelhead appliances and uncovers the root cause of the problems associated with each.
    * Policy Management - from internal business policies to externally mandated regulatory requirements, provides comprehensive policy management for Steelhead appliances.
    * Service Level Agreement (SLA) Reporting - enabling at-a-glance visibility into SLA compliance, provides comprehensive analytics and reporting for Steelhead appliances across security, compliance and lifecycle policies.

Vice president of marketing at AlterPoint, David Cramer, declared: “As the market leader in WDS, Riverbed is recognized for helping customers deploy critical business services with increased speed and accuracy across complex network environments.” He continued: “We are proud to join Riverbed in offering an integrated solution that links application performance with the manageability of the myriad devices that support such services.”