Riverbed launches AI-powered observability platform

With the observability enhancements, Riverbed unveiled its Riverbed Unified Agent, which promises to streamline the deployment and management of observability products with a single software agent. The unified agent will enable enterprise network managers to adopt Riverbed modules without deploying more software or having to maintain an additional component to collect and report on data across the environment.

“The universal agent reduces the amount of administrative overhead customers would have if they were using both NPM+ and Aternity,” says Shamus McGillicuddy, research director for the network management practice at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).

“Right now, the main alternative to NPM+ is a synthetic network monitoring solution, such as those offered by Cisco ThousandEyes, Broadcom AppNeta, and CatchPoint. Let’s say Riverbed Aternity customers want to adopt one of these competitors for a synthetic solution. To get the client-side perspective from those alternative solutions, customers would have to deploy a second agent on devices,” McGillicuddy says.

“At some point, you want to limit the number of agents you’re running on a device to mitigate management complexity, but also to avoid overtaxing resources of client devices. The Universal Agent streamlines agent management and agent overhead.”

With a unified agent, Riverbed is reducing the overhead needed to gain visibility across myriad devices while also reporting on data needed to improve digital experiences. The Riverbed Unified Agent installs on managed devices, it becomes an enabler for module features, and the technology can be automatically updated without human intervention.

By providing visibility into an extended environment, Riverbed is giving network managers a means to better manage cloud applications and services as well as remote workers.