Riverbed Technology, the IT infrastructure performance company for networks, applications and storage, has introduced its Central Management Console – Virtual Edition (CMC-VE) designed for managed service providers (MSPs).
The company claimed that CMC-VE offers MSPs a multi-tenant product to manage multiple sets of Steelhead appliance deployments, each dedicated to a discrete customer. As a result, MSPs can scale central management capabilities for their customers as they grow and bring on new customers—without purchasing and deploying new hardware.
CMC-VE is a virtualised version of the Central Management Console (CMC) appliance, which reportedly helps enterprises simplify the process of deploying, configuring and managing Steelhead appliances.
The new offering allows MSPs to allocate management licenses to enterprise customers through its new multi-tenant capabilities. CMC-VE runs on VMWare ESX, and MSPs can run it on any existing server that has capacity, the company claimed.
The company also noted that with the new offering, MSPs can utilise the capabilities of central management for Steelhead appliance deployments across multiple customers. The number of CMC-VE instances and Steelhead appliances that can be managed on a single physical server varies, and depends on each individual MSP’s environment.
Alan Saldich, vice president of product marketing at Riverbed, said: “By introducing a multi-tenant platform and flexible licensing, MSPs can manage thousands of Steelhead appliances across multiple customer sites – all from one physical server in their data centre.
“In addition, CMC-VE can be deployed almost instantly when an MSP brings on a new customer – without having to deploy additional hardware. CMC-VE allows us to address managed service provider needs by providing them with the flexibility and scalability to improve their service margins and reduce operational costs.”
CMC-VE is expected to be generally available in October 2009.
