With Steelhead® Mobile 3.1, Riverbed® enables even faster performance for enterprise business applications and improved flexibility to support mobile workers everywhere with better access and performance on both Windows and Mac systems. Slow speed is no longer a barrier to mobility with new protocol optimizations, expanded platform and operating system support, and client developments that improve the performance of the entire Riverbed WAN optimization deployment.  Steelhead Mobile 3.1 gives IT managers the opportunity to simplify their network infrastructure by offering a single solution to the problems that plague performance.

Citrix Virtual Desktop Optimization

Acceleration and QoS Enhancements for Citrix XenApp: Many Citrix customers have struggled with virtual desktop performance across the WAN, impacting end user acceptance and productivity. Steelhead Mobile 3.1 offers mobile workers identical functionality to improve Citrix performance as other Steelhead products, giving organizations a single complete solution to make their virtual desktop performance faster than ever before. Riverbed has simplified configuration and enhanced the QoS capabilities for Citrix resulting in up to 60% faster and more predictable and consistent response times, previously a major source of user frustration. Bandwidth utilization is also improved, offering bandwidth savings of up to 50-80%.  Steelhead Mobile 3.1 also makes it easier for organizations to get the most from their Citrix deployments by simplifying configuration and deployment.

Apple Mac Client

The Speed and Simplicity of Steelhead Mobile for Mac Users With this release Riverbed introduces the industry’s only mobile WAN optimization solution for Apple Mac systems.  Built on the same Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS) architecture that power Steelhead WAN optimization and Steelhead Mobile PC clients, the Steelhead Mobile Mac client software delivers consistent performance improvements allowing mobile users to work as effectively out of the office as they are in it. 

VMware Fusion Optimization

Simultaneous Optimization for both Mac and PC Applications In addition to offering the only mobile WAN optimization solution for Mac users, the Steelhead Mobile Mac client is also the only solution to optimize Windows applications running in VMware Fusion.  With many Mac users choosing to run Mac and PC applications side by side, Steelhead Mobile 3.1 provides the flexibility to accelerate whichever applications they need, independent of which OS it runs in.

Microsoft Applications Enhancements

Exchange 2010 Application Optimization Steelhead Mobile 3.1 is the first mobile WAN optimization solution to officially support both network and application layer optimizations to Exchange 2010.  Users can see data reductions of up to 97% and up to 30 times faster performance, giving administrators the freedom to upgrade their Exchange environments without concern for performance.  

Secure Acceleration for Encrypted MAPI With the release of Exchange 2007 and 2010 Microsoft enabled encryption by default, forcing administrators to choose between security and performance. Steelhead Mobile 3.1 introduces the same solution for encrypted MAPI that was originally developed for the Steelhead Appliance to mobile workers, improving response times by up to 45 times. By providing a single approach for optimizing communication between client and host servers without impacting security Riverbed makes it easier to deliver consistent performance to branch office and mobile workers in environments where email encryption is used.

SharePoint & Microsoft Online Steelhead Mobile 3.1 builds on the existing web application optimizations for SharePoint that improve check in/check out times by up to 30 times.  These additional optimizations for SharePoint reduce latency effects and speed response times by up to 30 percent, providing users with LAN like speeds across the WAN for navigation within the SharePoint Portal.  Steelhead Mobile 3.1 also provides support for optimizing Microsoft Online BPOS services such as Exchange Online and SharePoint Online. The optimizations work in both encrypted and unencrypted environments.

SMB Signing Support

Allows customers who serve files from domain controllers where Microsoft's SMB signing is set to “required” by default to protect themselves from "man in the middle" attacks. This feature gives support for CIFS latency avoiding optimizations in the presence of signed packets and across multiple network domains.