Riverbed - Everything You Need To Know About Riverbed

When you're looking for a reliable, performance‑driven technology vendor - especially one centered on digital experience and observability - Riverbed deserves a close look. This blog serves as your one‑stop resource: who they are, what they do, how they add value, suitable alternatives, and how Viewpoint Analysis can help you find your perfect partner.

Who are Riverbed?

Riverbed is a long-established player in the enterprise technology space, best known for helping organizations improve the performance and reliability of their digital operations. Founded in the early 2000s and headquartered in California, the company has spent more than two decades building expertise in network optimization, application acceleration, and more recently, digital experience monitoring and observability.

Over the years, Riverbed has adapted alongside the changing needs of IT teams and business leaders. From the early days of improving wide-area network (WAN) performance through its flagship SteelHead technology, to today’s focus on AI-powered observability and employee experience, the company has consistently evolved to keep pace with how enterprises work.

Today, Riverbed positions itself as a partner for organizations looking to deliver fast, reliable, and secure digital experiences - whether that’s for employees working remotely, customers accessing online services, or IT teams managing complex hybrid environments. Their reputation is built on being pragmatic, performance-driven, and focused on ensuring technology works the way people expect it to.

What do Riverbed do?

Riverbed delivers solutions that help enterprises manage, observe, and accelerate their digital infrastructure and user experiences. Key offerings include:

• Unified Observability & AIOps: Their platform combines full‑stack telemetry, from network to end‑user, with AI (causal, predictive, generative, agentic) to detect and resolve IT issues proactively.

• Digital Employee Experience (DEX): Riverbed is recognized as a Leader in Gartner’s 2025 Magic Quadrant for DEX tools for the second year running.

• Acceleration & WAN Optimization: Their SteelHead product line (and SD‑WAN capabilities) speeds up application delivery and improves performance across WANs.

• Network and Application Performance Management: They cover NPM, APM, end‑user experience monitoring, and horizontal visibility across the IT stack.

Their platform, branded broadly as "The Riverbed Platform," supports digital transformation, cost reduction, security/compliance, and hybrid‑work optimization across industries like finance, government, healthcare, and retail.

How can Riverbed help your business?

Riverbed’s value is often felt in the day-to-day realities of IT and business operations. Whether it’s supporting hybrid workforces, delivering seamless customer experiences, or simplifying complex IT estates, their platform is designed to remove friction and keep digital services running smoothly.

• Enhancing employee experience: For organizations with large remote or hybrid teams, Riverbed helps IT departments monitor and improve performance at the device and application level. That means fewer dropped calls, smoother video conferencing, and more consistent access to business-critical apps - boosting productivity and employee satisfaction.

  
  

• Improving customer-facing services: In sectors like retail, banking, and healthcare, digital services are the first point of contact for customers. Riverbed’s observability and optimization tools help ensure websites and applications stay responsive, even during high-demand periods, so businesses don’t lose revenue or customer trust due to performance issues.

  
  

• Simplifying IT operations: By consolidating monitoring and performance management into a single platform, Riverbed reduces the complexity of managing sprawling IT environments. AI-driven insights allow teams to find the root cause of issues faster and automate routine fixes, freeing staff to focus on strategic initiatives.

  
  

• Supporting transformation and compliance: Many enterprises are amid cloud migrations, digital modernization, or regulatory change. Riverbed provides the visibility and performance monitoring needed to make these transitions without compromising speed, security, or compliance obligations.

  
  

Combined with the proven cost savings and efficiency improvements seen in their case studies, these capabilities make Riverbed a pragmatic partner for enterprises that want confidence that their technology will perform reliably, scale with demand, and deliver measurable business outcomes.

What are the alternatives to Riverbed?

If you are just starting your initial market assessment, the best way forward is to bring a group of vendors together and ask them to present how they can help you. At Viewpoint Analysis, we use the concept of a 'Problem Statement' and issue this to multiple vendors as part of our Technology Matchmaker Service - it's a great way of quickly assessing the market, working out who is who, and quickly understanding the good and the bad. Try it out yourself or let us know if we can help.

If you’re exploring vendors across similar domains, here are some grouped alternatives:

Unified Observability / AIOps

• Dynatrace

• New Relic

• Splunk Observability

Digital Employee Experience / End‑User Monitoring

• Microsoft Viva Insights

• NICE Satmetrix

• ExtraHop

Application Performance & Network Optimization

• Cisco SD‑WAN (Viptela)

• VMware (formerly VeloCloud)

• F5 Networks

These vendors each bring unique strengths, whether in cloud-native observability, enterprise integrations, or network services - making them useful benchmarks or options alongside Riverbed.

Summary

Riverbed Technology, with roots dating back to 2002, stands out in digital performance through unified observability, AI‑powered insights, WAN optimization, and end‑user experience monitoring. Their platform is proven in driving operational efficiency, user satisfaction, and cost savings for large enterprises. While alternatives exist, Riverbed’s holistic blend of AI, telemetry, performance tools, and industry trust (e.g., Gartner recognition) makes it a compelling choice for those serious about digital experience.

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How can Viewpoint Analysis help?

Viewpoint Analysis’ Find and Select services streamline your technology vendor evaluation and selection and take the weight off your shoulders. Whether you are at the ideas stage or wanting to run a full and quick process, we have every base covered:

• Technology Matchmaker: We pair you with vendors like Riverbed that align with your needs.

• Rapid RFI: Quickly gather vendor information with structured questionnaires.

• Rapid RFP: Launch vendor proposals efficiently, ideal for narrowing down shortlist.

• 30‑Day Technology Selection Process: A comprehensive end‑to‑end evaluation - from requirement gathering to vendor recommendation - in just one month.