Revenue gains and profit growth are tough to come by these days, but Riverbed Technology managed to secure both in its latest quarter, beating analyst expectations.

Riverbed reported $88.2 million revenue in its first quarter, ended March 31, which represents a gain of 21% from $73 million reported in the first quarter of last year. Net income for the quarter came in at $974,000 - a gain of 53% over the $638,000 reported a year earlier. (Non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $9.2 million, or $0.13 per diluted share, as compared to non-GAAP net income of $7.9 million, or $0.11 per diluted share, a year ago.)

"We are pleased with the strong results we are reporting for the first quarter," said Riverbed CEO Jerry Kennelly in a statement. "We executed well, achieving 21% year-over-year revenue growth and a 33% increase in non-GAAP operating profit.”

Highlights of Riverbed’s first quarter included an OEM agreement with Microsoft to license Windows Server 2008 for deployment on Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances (via the Riverbed Services Platform, which enables third-party applications to run inside Riverbed gear, reducing the need for multiple boxes at customer sites).

Riverbed also closed its acquisition of Mazu Networks and announced an agreement with HP to deliver WAN optimization through the HP ProCurve Open Network Ecosystem (ONE) alliance program.

Meanwhile, F5 Networks in its second fiscal quarter, ended March 31, saw revenue drop but grew its bottom line.

F5’s revenue came in at $154.1 million, a drop of 3% when compared to the $159.1 million reported in the second quarter of fiscal ’08. Net income came in at $19 million, a gain of 7% over the $17.7 million reported a year earlier.

"Despite the challenging economic environment, revenue from our core application delivery controller business was flat as compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2008, and revenue from our file virtualization business grew sequentially from the first quarter of fiscal 2009,” said F5 CEO John McAdam in a statement. “We were also pleased that as a result of our aggressive cost-reduction and expense-control initiatives, we exceeded both our operating margin and cash flow targets for the quarter.”

During the quarter F5 upgraded its Enterprise Manager software with improved management, automation and network health monitoring capabilities. Earlier this month, at the start of its third quarter, F5 announced new machine-to-machine capabilities for its Big-IP acceleration devices.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.