With Steelhead Mobile, enterprises can give mobile workers LAN-like access to corporate files and applications no matter where they are, anywhere in the world. Installing a simple software package on their laptops or desktops delivers all of the powerful benefits of the Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS).

Adding performance to mobility, Steelhead Mobile delivers on the promise of global collaboration by virtually eliminating distance and bandwidth constraints for applications. Companies can leverage the right staff for projects regardless of geography, taking advantage of all internal resources first and cutting project costs.

Steelhead Mobile works by interacting directly with any Steelhead appliance to optimize applications the same way two Steelhead devices would work together. (At least one Steelhead Mobile Controller (SMC) is required to manage Steelhead Mobile licensing.)

For Steelhead Mobile users, applications and collaboration work exactly the same – just faster. Mobile requires no changes to hardware, software or processes. IT managers don’t make any changes to routers, VPN infrastructure, SSL/HTTPS servers, or any of the other key technology in their enterprise. In fact, managers can control whether or not mobile workers see anything at all (like the Steelhead Mobile system tray icon), or if they want Steelhead Mobile to be completely invisible to the users.

Using the Steelhead Mobile Controller, network administrators direct the installation process and the configuration policies that determine what optimizations take place per user or groups of users. The software gets pushed out to client machines via Microsoft Installation (MSI) packages.

Steelhead Mobile Accelerates Applications
Steelhead Mobile combines patented data reduction, TCP optimization, application-level latency optimization, and management functionality to form a comprehensive enterprise Wide Area Data Services (WDS) solution. Scaling across many applications and network topologies, Steelhead can accelerate application response from five to 50 times—as much as 100 times in some cases. Steelhead Mobile presents a mash-up of data streamlining and transport streamlining to initiate data reduction, compression, and transport protocol optimization.

Layer 2 Data Streamlining
Data streamlining works across all TCP applications to reduce bandwidth consumption by 60% to 95%. It affects Windows file sharing, Microsoft Office, Email (including MS Exchange and Lotus Notes), CAD, ERP, databases, and all other applications that use TCP, to ensure the same data is never sent more than once over the WAN. 

Layer 4 Transport Streamlining
Transport streamlining reduces the number of TCP packets required to transfer data by 65% to 98%. Transport streamlining overcomes TCP limitations by adopting transmission characteristics like window scale, loss handling, congestion notification and more. 

Layer 7 Application Streamlining
Application streamlining provides additional order-of-magnitude application performance improvements by reducing application protocol chattiness as much as 98% and minimizing application overhead. By minimizing application protocol round trips and required network connections, Steelhead Mobile can provide massive throughput increases to applications that use Windows file sharing (CIFS) and Exchange (MAPI). 

Management Streamlining
Riverbed simplifies the deployment and management of Steelhead Mobile software with the easy building of MSI packages through the Steelhead Mobile Controller (SMC). The SMC permits central configuring of policies and updates for distributed workers plus enterprise reporting and troubleshooting capabilities. The SMC can also configure optional email or SNMP alerts and schedule jobs. 

Steelhead Mobile 2.0 adds valuable features...