Riverbed's Observability Platform Expansion
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.
Riverbed Platform Expansion
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 Growth and Development
Riverbed’s observability bookings in Q1 2025 grew 102 percent year over year, marked by customer and channel partner interest in the platform, according to Dave Donatelli, Riverbed’s CEO. The platform has helped take Riverbed from a point product company to a platform company tapping into its strength in observability.
Riverbed's Enhanced AI Capabilities
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. 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.
Riverbed's Latest Offerings
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.
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.
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.
