Riverbed Technology this week launched a new version of the operating system that powers its lineup of Steelhead WAN optimization appliances.

Central to Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS) Version 5.0 is technology that lets customers run local branch services -- such as print and proxy file services -- on their Steelhead appliances so they can cut back on the number of dedicated servers deployed in remote offices.

With the new RiOS Services Platform, customers can deploy services from third-party vendors in a self-contained partition on Steelhead appliances.

“It’s carving out a protected partition on the Steelhead appliance so that customers can run additional services and applications without another dedicated server in the office,” says Harold Byun, senior product marketing manager at Riverbed. “Customers gain from additional consolidation, and they can reduce their hardware costs as well as their administrative overhead.”

Initially, Riverbed’s data services platform can run local print server and streaming media services. Riverbed plans to support additional applications and services in the future. One example is IP address management, which Riverbed plans to offer soon via a partnership with Infoblox, Byun says. Further out on the horizon are potential add-ons such as an application performance monitoring sensor, or a unified threat management module, he says.

There’s a $495 fee to activate the RiOS Services Platform on each Steelhead device. Today customers can use just one module, but future versions of the platform will let customers run multiple modules at once.

Also new in RiOS 5.0 are optimization techniques tailored for Microsoft Exchange 2007 (Riverbed already accelerates Exchange 2000 and 2003). Riverbed is providing protocol optimization for the Exchange 2007 protocol, MAPI 2K7, at the application layer.

For Oracle shops, RiOS 5.0 improves Riverbed’s acceleration capabilities for Oracle 11i applications running in HTTP mode. The improvements target the Oracle E-Business suite of applications, particularly Oracle forms traffic and reporting, Riverbed says.

The vendor also has worked to improve its existing HTTP and HTTPS acceleration capabilities to speed enterprise Web applications such as SAP NetWeaver, PeopleSoft/JD Edwards, Siebel CRM, Microsoft SharePoint, and Outlook Web Access. Users of RiOS 5.0 will see additional performance improvements of up to 10x for their Web applications, Riverbed claims.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.