SAN FRANCISCO and ALISO VIEJO, Calif., May 18, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- Riverbed Technology, Inc. and QLogic(R) Corp. (Nasdaq:QLGC) today announced that QLogic will showcase Riverbed's Steelhead(R) appliance product family at Fusion 2006: QLogic Worldwide Partner Conference. The two companies also announced that the Steelhead appliance product family is fully interoperable with QLogic SANblade(R) host bus adapters (HBAs), SANbox(R) switches, SANbox intelligent storage routers and SANbox storage services platforms. From datacenter to branch office, Riverbed(R) and QLogic are combining application acceleration with end-to-end storage networking to provide IT professionals with an intelligent platform on which to deliver high levels of application performance.
"There's a wave of activity among Global 2000 corporations to optimize branch office applications," said Frank Berry, vice president of marketing, QLogic Corp. "For channel partners, one of the highlights of our Fusion event will be demonstrations of branch office solutions based on Riverbed's popular Steelhead appliance."
Servers typically operate at 15 to 20 percent of CPU capacity. With server virtualization, utilization rises to as much as 80 percent, allowing system administrators to consolidate greater workloads on fewer servers and provide substantial savings in space and power. Additional benefits will include the ability to migrate and isolate workloads in the event of system failure.
"In virtualized server environments, the combination of Riverbed and QLogic gives our channel partners a solution set that allows them to address the growing demand for remote office consolidation, while ensuring high-performance of applications across the WAN," said Eric Wolford, senior vice president, marketing and business development.
Riverbed's award-winning Steelhead appliances accelerate enterprise applications typically by five to 50 times and in some cases up to 100 times between enterprise datacenters and remote offices. For companies that share data and collaborate between distributed offices, Steelhead intelligent optimization provides significant performance improvements for a broad range of applications resulting in the ability to simplify IT infrastructure and realize significant capital and operational cost savings.
Unlike competing approaches that are built primarily on either a network-compression or storage (caching) philosophy (like many WAFS-only architectures), Steelhead appliances are based on the Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS) that accelerates all TCP-based applications, including common applications like Windows file sharing, MAPI, Microsoft SQL and DPM, NetApp's SnapMirror, Symantec's NetBackup and FTP, while adding incremental application-specific latency optimizations to minimize the impact of latency on key applications.
Riverbed's intelligent optimizations also enable remote office IT consolidation, WAN bandwidth optimization and acceleration of data replication and backup for disaster recovery.
Fusion 2006: QLogic Worldwide Partner Conference
The QLogic Worldwide Partner Conference is the industry's largest 100 percent pure SAN channel conference. This year's North American event is being held at the Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, Texas and will be attended by over 800 channel professionals including distributors, resellers, sponsors, and analysts.
About Riverbed
Riverbed Technology, Inc. is the performance leader in wide-area data services (WDS) solutions. By enabling application performance over the wide area network (WAN) that is orders of magnitude faster than what users experience today, Riverbed is changing the way people work, and enabling a distributed workforce that can collaborate as if they were local. The Wall Street Journal named Riverbed the winner of its 2005 Technology Innovation Award in the Network/Broadband/Internet category. In addition, InfoWorld has named Riverbed's Steelhead appliance "Technology of the Year" in both 2005 and 2006, as the "Best WAN Accelerator." Riverbed's award-winning solutions are available worldwide from resellers who are members of the Riverbed Partner Network, from Riverbed OEM partners, or directly from Riverbed. For more information about Riverbed, visit www.riverbed.com.
About QLogic
QLogic is a leading supplier of high performance storage networking solutions including Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs), blade server embedded Fibre Channel switches, Fibre Channel stackable switches, iSCSI HBAs, iSCSI routers and storage services platforms for enabling advanced storage management applications. The company is also a leading supplier of server networking products including InfiniBand host channel adapters that accelerate cluster performance. QLogic products are delivered to small-to-medium businesses and large enterprises around the world via its channel partner community. QLogic products are also powering solutions from leading companies like Cisco, Dell, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, NEC, Network Appliance and Sun Microsystems. QLogic is a member of the S&P 500 Index. For more information go to http://www.qlogic.com.
Note: All QLogic-issued press releases appear on the Company's website (www.qlogic.com). Any announcement that does not appear on the QLogic website has not been issued by QLogic.
Disclaimer - Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains statements relating to future results of the Company (including certain beliefs and projections regarding business trends) that are "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied in the forward-looking statements. The Company advises readers that these potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: potential fluctuations in operating results; gross margins that may vary over time; revenues may be affected by changes in IT spending levels; the stock price of the Company may be volatile; the Company's dependence on the storage area network market; the ability to maintain and gain market or industry acceptance of the Company's products; the Company's dependence on a limited number of customers; seasonal fluctuations and uneven sales patterns in orders from customers; the Company's ability to compete effectively with other companies; declining average unit sales prices of comparable products; a reduction in sales efforts by current distributors; reliance on third party licenses; dependence on sole source and limited source suppliers; the Company's dependence on relationships with certain silicon chip suppliers; the complexity of the Company's products; sales fluctuations arising from customer transitions to new products; the uncertainty associated with SOX 404 compliance; environmental compliance costs; terrorist activities and resulting military actions; international, economic, regulatory, political and other risks; uncertain benefits from strategic business combinations; the ability to maintain or expand upon strategic alliances; the strain on resources caused by growth and expansion; the ability to attract and retain key personnel; the decreased effectiveness of equity compensation; difficulties in transitioning to smaller geometry process technologies; the ability to protect proprietary rights; the ability to satisfactorily resolve any infringement claims; changes in tax laws or adverse tax audit results; computer viruses and other tampering with the Company's computer systems; charter documents and stockholder rights plan that may discourage a business combination; and facilities of the Company and its suppliers and customers are located in areas subject to natural disasters.
More detailed information on these and additional factors which could affect the Company's operating and financial results are described in the Company's Forms 10-K, 10-Q and other reports filed, or to be filed, with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company urges all interested parties to read these reports to gain a better understanding of the many business and other risks that the Company faces. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made only as of the date hereof, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
QLogic, the QLogic logo and SANbox are registered trademarks of QLogic Corporation. SANblade is a registered trademark in the United States. Other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of the companies with which they are associated.
Riverbed Technology, Riverbed, Steelhead, RiOS and the Riverbed logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riverbed Technology, Inc. All other trademarks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.