Member Avatar for Brian.oco
Brian.oco 0 Posting Whiz

A quiet holiday week so far in the technology side of the stock market. Most of the action will take place in the retail sector, with both Best Buy and Comp USA opening on Thanksgiving night - - well ahead of Black Friday.

Early holiday shoppers can expect to find computers, digital cameras, and HD TV's at lower prices, as retailers are determined to do what it takes to get people in the door.

Back in the markets, I did run across a report from Gartner Group that touts the application acceleration equipment market. In it, Gartner keeps coming back to a company called Riverbed Technology (Nasdaq: RVBD) that is growing by leaps and bounds on the WAN optimization controller side of the market.

According to Gartner’s market share report, Riverbed demonstrated very strong growth to grab 30.6% of the sector's market share. Says Gartner, this is the fourth quarter in a row that Riverbed has maintained the leadership position in the Advanced WOC category. In the same report, Gartner recognized Riverbed as the market share leader in the WOC category for the 2nd quarter in a row.

According to Eric Wolford, senior vice president, marketing and business development at Riverbed. “Riverbed delivers WDS solutions for the data center, remote office and mobile workers that accelerate the broad set of applications important to business — without sacrificing the security of enterprise data.”

It's not a technology sector that I claim to be too familiar with, but 30% market share is 30% market share. Gartnet touts Riverbed's flagship product; the Steelhead Mobile product, a software client version of its award-winning WDS technology, which was rolled out in August 2007. According to Riverbed's web site, the Steelhead Mobile software client is intended to deliver LAN-like application performance to any employee, whether on the road, working from home or connected wirelessly in the office.

So if you're looking for an up-and-comer in a section of the technology market that few people pay close attention to, Riverbed might be a good bet. Buy it for someone you love for Christmas.

  • 1 Contributor
  • 0 Replies
  • 202 Views

Dani AI

Generated

Good overview from . A few points of context that add technical and financial clarity without repeating the original market-share claim.

Riverbed showed real top-line traction in 2007 — Q3 revenue came in around $63.3M (roughly +157% year‑over‑year), which helps explain why appliance deployments moved quickly from pilots into production at many large customers. (See the Q3 2007 report.)
Riverbed Q3 2007 revenue summary

What "WAN optimization" actually delivers in day‑to‑day operations: byte‑level deduplication, compression, TCP optimization/connection multiplexing, and edge caching. Those techniques reduce repeated transfers, cut bandwidth needs, and shorten perceived latency for interactive apps — the engineering reason appliances looked so compelling for branch/backup/replication use cases. (Vendor pages and contemporary technical coverage summarize these mechanisms.)
Overview of SteelHead Mobile / SteelHead capabilities
Contemporary tech summary of WAN optimization techniques

Measured ROI figures circulated at the time (vendor/analyst interviews) supported the sales case for many deployments; IDC-based materials cited multi‑thousand dollar savings per 100 users over a three‑year window, making scale and consolidation plans the key drivers of purchase decisions.
SteelHead Controller / IDC ROI reference

Risk notes for anyone looking back: the appliance model attracted strong incumbent and startup competition (Cisco WAAS, Silver Peak and others were active in 2006–2008), and longer‑term pressures—software approaches, virtualization, and cloud‑centric architectures—were the structural threats that could compress margins or shift value to different parts of the stack. When evaluating Riverbed historically, balance the product/ROI case against channel execution, recurring revenue trends, and how the roadmap addressed cloud and software alternatives.
Cisco WAAS adoption timeline | Silver Peak coverage (2007)

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.