Riverbed Enhances Observability Platform with Advanced AI Capabilities

Riverbed rolls out new AI-powered observability features - SiliconANGLE

Riverbed Technology LLC is updating its observability platform with new artificial intelligence tools that will help companies fix technical issues quicker. The company detailed the enhancements today. Redwood City, California-based Riverbed went public in 2006 and was acquired by an investor consortium for $3.6 billion eight years later. Today, its observability platform is used by thousands of organizations including most of the Fortune 100. The software can spot technical issues in cloud environments, on-premises environments, employee devices and other technology assets. Under the hood, Riverbed's platform is powered by a data management engine called the Data Store. It can analyze up to petabytes of technical information from a company's technology environments. Data Store automatically indexes the ingested records, which means it creates shortcuts that make it possible to find specific items faster. The new release of the platform that Riverbed detailed today will ship with a tool called IQ Assist. According to the company, it visualizes technical issues in a graphical interface and suggests remediation methods. The tool can optionally sync incident data to external applications such as ServiceNow that administrators use to tackle outages. Another new AI tool, Predictive AI, is designed to help companies spot future technical issues and fix them ahead of time. It identifies latency fluctuations with the potential to negatively impact an application's user experience. The tool also detects situations where workloads strain the infrastructure on which they run. After identifying a potential technical issue, administrators can remediate it with a third new capability called Agentic AI. It provides access to AI agents that can automate some of the manual work involved in the troubleshooting process. Riverbed says that customers can deploy agents through a drag-and-drop interface. "Customers want to consolidate observability tools, deploy AI that delivers ROI, and feed their enterprise data repositories," said Chief Executive Officer Dave Donatelli. The new AI features are rolling out alongside enhancements to the company's Unified Agent. This is the agent, or lightweight program, that Riverbed's platform uses to collect data about technical issues. Customers install the agent on the systems they wish to monitor for errors. The Unified Agent is receiving a module that will allow it to gather telemetry from collaboration services such as Zoom and Microsoft. According to Riverbed, a second new module can collect data about the Wi-Fi modem and Thunderbolt ports of a computer powered by Intel Corp. silicon. That information is useful for detecting technical issues in computer peripherals. Rounding out the update is a third module dubbed the NPM+ Packet Capture. It will enable the Unified Agent to monitor network traffic from employees' Windows, Mac and Linux computers. Network traffic can contain useful information about a range of cybersecurity issues, such as cloud applications that are used by employees without permission. Riverbed's observability platform includes a component called Aternity that helps companies check their software for user experience issues. Aternity can, for example, point out if a certain interface section loads slowly. As part of today's update, Riverbed is making the tool easier to install in Kubernetes clusters and virtual desktop environments.

Riverbed and Intel team up on enterprise observability for AI - SiliconANGLE

Riverbed and Intel unlock enterprise observability for the AI era Enterprise observability is becoming a make-or-break capability for artificial intelligence. Riverbed Technology LLC aims to cut through the noise with a unified platform that delivers measurable outcomes for performance-hungry enterprises in a market bloated with tools and buzzwords. The company's engineering collaboration with Intel Corp. is a key driver behind this evolution. The partnership has given the company exclusive access to low-level system interfaces, empowering new levels of enterprise observability, diagnostics and real-time performance insight that other vendors can't offer, according to Dave Donatelli (pictured, right) chief executive officer of Riverbed. "We've had a great relationship with Intel," he said. "They run their business on our products, they use our products ... great engineering relationship. They've opened those interfaces up to us. We did joint development together." Donatelli spoke with John Furrier (left), during an exclusive conversation on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's livestreaming studio. They discussed Riverbed's unified observability platform, the Intel partnership and how performance visibility is evolving to meet enterprise AI demands. (* Disclosure below.) Riverbed's platform begins at the data layer, but its real intelligence comes from its IQ engine -- a decision-making layer fueled by real-time telemetry collected from network performance tools, application infrastructure and endpoints, according to Donatelli. This information feeds into the company's patented Riverbed Data Store, which ingests both native and third-party data at enterprise scale, enabling analytics capabilities that support AI workloads. "Our data store ... pulls all from that first layer ... [and] the IQ engine is where we apply all the algorithms to it," Donatelli said. "We can do what we call automations and remediations, we can do agentic AI, we can do predictive AI [and] we can do generative -- all using IQ." Now in its third generation, IQ sits atop the Riverbed Data Store and acts as the control tower for data-driven actions. Organizations are already seeing an impact in areas such as automated problem resolution and performance optimization, according to Donatelli. "We have done more than 64 million real-world automated events for customers," he said. We have more than 39 customers already, and this list grows every month, of people doing more than 10,000 remediations every month." Riverbed's Smart OTel technology brings a new level of precision to enterprise observability. Built on OpenTelemetry protocols and powered by the company's IQ engine, it enables organizations to fine-tune what data they collect, how it's filtered and where it's sent, cutting through noisy telemetry streams and helping teams focus on the information that actually matters, according to Donatelli. "They don't want to be flooded ... the beauty of the IQ algorithms is they can just precisely get exactly what they're looking for," he said. "Instead of just getting a flood of raw data, we're going to give them more precise data ... [and] slice it any way you want in order for whatever the project is within your company." The company's Unified Agent applies the same simplification mindset to the observability infrastructure. Rather than layering countless individual software agents on users' machines, Riverbed now offers a single consolidated agent that supports plug-and-play modules, according to Donatelli. "We've reined them in by having a common agent," he said. "[Last year], we announced three modules ... now we just announced three more agents." One of the most notable additions is the Intel diagnostics module, developed in partnership with Intel to provide low-level visibility into Thunderbolt and Wi-Fi performance. No other vendor has access to those interfaces, and the engineering work required makes this capability uniquely Riverbed's, according to Donatelli. "Now our products can see all the way through, help again, identify problems, diagnose [and] resolve," he said. "[That's] a module that will go into our Unified Agent." As unified communications become mission-critical for video-heavy enterprises, Riverbed's ability to monitor and fix problems before they happen sets it apart from traditional, reactive platforms that struggle to support enterprise observability in real time, according to Donatelli. Predictive diagnostics ensure that high-level calls don't get derailed by performance issues. "We can monitor in real time, which is [to] understand things as they're happening to fix them," Donatelli said. "But more importantly, we can do predictive." The company is also seeing a resurgence in its core acceleration business, driven by enterprise AI's growing appetite for data movement, Donatelli added. While previous network upgrades reduced demand for acceleration, the tide has turned as organizations now struggle to move massive datasets efficiently across traditional infrastructure. "People are seeing they have to move so much data that they need new solutions," Donatelli said. "What we're doing, from a technology perspective, our biggest launch in seven years ... all new products across the board ... [is] around helping people with AI in this space. Regardless of how fast your network is, most people are running traditional apps ... and [they] can't take advantage of the speed. Guess what they need to run well? Acceleration." Riverbed's customers aren't just seeing technical gains; they're reporting dramatic shifts in support efficiency and problem resolution, according to Donatelli. As adoption expands across industries, performance metrics that speak directly to enterprise pain points are surfacing. These outcomes also reflect Riverbed's ability to deliver enterprise observability with measurable impact. "A large bank has eliminated 75,000 calls to their help desk per month," Donatelli said. "With that, they've reduced their mean time to repair ... by 25%. "[A] big healthcare company had 10,000 endpoints. Same idea: Their view is each call they get on any of these circumstances is 20 minutes of time minimum to fix. We've been reducing that 20 minutes time and taking it away because now we can fix things proactively that they don't have to touch." Here's theCUBE's complete video interview with Dave Donatelli:

Flagship Riverbed Observability Platform Receives Generative, Predictive And Agentic AI Infusion

Building on its major platform launch last year, Riverbed is packing its observability platform with generative, predictive and agentic AI features. The company also unveiled observability modules for UC applications, network packets and Intel Thunderbolt connected devices, Riverbed's CEO tells CRN. Riverbed's flagship AI-powered observability platform has been expanded to include generative, predictive and agentic AI features, as well as a new module for measuring unified communications (UC) performance and an expanded packet capture feature that includes visibility for packet connections outside an organization's network, the company revealed on Tuesday. The Riverbed platform was announced last May in a launch the company called its biggest release in years. The aim of the open, AI-powered observability platform was to fill in the blind spots that exist in complex IT environments that include public cloud and remote work environments, as well as zero trust and SD-WAN architectures. At the same time, the San Francisco-based company launched the second generation of Riverbed IQ 2.0, an AIOps service that gives IT teams a chance to solve issues faster and without human intervention. Riverbed's observability bookings in Q1 2025 grew 102 percent year over year, marked by customer and channel partner interest in the platform, Dave Donatelli, Riverbed's CEO, told CRN. [Related: HPE, Juniper Networks Claim If DOJ Succeeds In Blocking $14B Deal 'True Beneficiary' Will Be Cisco] The one-year-old platform has helped take Riverbed from a point product company to a platform company tapping into its strength in observability. There's room for partners to build advisory services around observability, too, said Mike Burnstein, chief growth officer for Ashburn, Va.-based solution provider and Riverbed partner RavenTek. "They're going to provide [customers] with access to all the stuff that they've had over the years as far as optimization and application enhancement, but [enterprises] also get a real-world, AI powered engine on top of it, and we see that as a big plus," Burnstein said. RavenTek, which primarily works with federal clients, is seeing many of its clients trying to do more with less. The updates to the platform will help reduce time to resolution for network administrators, Burnstein said. "It will help with anticipating disruptions; it will help with self-healing environments, and it will really help with eliminating some of the antiquated ways that help desk and IT teams try to understand their environment. Even with AI, that's just the beginning," he said. The platform's expanded AI capabilities will help IT administrators managing AIOps move from reactive to predictive through three new features. The first is Riverbed IQ Assist, a generative AI assistant for AIOps that offers up intelligent, context-rich insights with minimal prompting and without long chatbot interactions. The new feature can integrate with service management platforms like ServiceNow. The second, Riverbed Predictive AI, has been built into Riverbed IQ Ops and analyzes historical and real-time telemetry to identify early warning signals before users notice any service disruptions. Lastly, Agentic AI, a new feature that can be enabled by the Riverbed Data Store, is built on a growing collection of task-specific agents that can be dragged and dropped into automations that IT teams design, according to Riverbed. "[Agentic AI] is where you get agents talking to agents and this is how things really get done," Donatelli said. "But one of the concerns customers have is that it's their environment. They don't necessarily want agents going around doing things that they don't know about." To remedy this, Riverbed gives enterprises full control over how the AI agents work and permissions, Donatelli said. "We will continue to build scenarios where customers can decide: 'OK, if this happens, I want agents to fix it automatically and without my intervention,' or to whatever degree they want it to work," he said. The predictive and generative AI features are now available, with Agentic shipping later this quarter, the company said. The company also unveiled the new Riverbed UC module for real-time visibility and analytics into UC applications such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and WebEx. The feature tracks issues such as jitter, latency, and packet loss and integrates with Riverbed Network Performance Management (NPM)+ for network and cloud monitoring and the Aternity offering for end user experience monitoring, the company said. Donatelli said that because users frequently have issues with UC tools, the latest offering will be very popular. "There's a lot of customer demand for this," he added. Building on NPM+, which was introduced last year, Packet Capture is a new SaaS-based module that provides detailed network diagnostic, including visibility for packet connections outside an organization's network, using endpoint packet capture support for MS, Linux, and macOS systems. "This really takes what used to be done on a very kind of bespoke hardware-based appliance, now to a SaaS product that sits at desktops and endpoints ... It's perfect for people who have clouds and zero-trust environments," he said. Riverbed also unveiled Aternity for Intel Thunderbolt, the company's own connectivity standard, and Wi-Fi. The offering will give enterprises visibility across their Intel connected environments, which includes peripherals, docking stations and monitors. The offering is now generally available, Riverbed said.