Riverbed SteelHead
Riverbed SteelHead is a network optimization solution that accelerates application performance and reduces bandwidth consumption across hybrid cloud environments to ensure your distributed teams stay productive and connected.
Cisco ThousandEyes
ThousandEyes is a digital experience monitoring platform that provides end-to-end visibility into the internet, cloud, and enterprise networks to help you resolve performance issues across your entire digital ecosystem.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | Riverbed SteelHead | Cisco ThousandEyes |
|---|---|---|
| Website | riverbed.com | thousandeyes.com |
| Pricing Model | Custom | Custom |
| Starting Price | Custom Pricing | Custom Pricing |
| FREE Trial | ✓ 0 days free trial | ✓ 15 days free trial |
| Free Plan | ✘ No free plan | ✘ No free plan |
| Product Demo | ✓ Request demo here | ✓ Request demo here |
| Deployment | ||
| Integrations | ||
| Target Users | ||
| Target Industries | ||
| Customer Count | 0 | 0 |
| Founded Year | 2002 | 2010 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, USA | San Francisco, USA |
Overview
Riverbed SteelHead
Riverbed SteelHead helps you overcome network latency and bandwidth constraints that slow down your business applications. Whether your tools live in a private data center, a public cloud, or are delivered as SaaS, this platform uses advanced data reduction and transport streamlining to make your apps run faster. You can significantly reduce the time it takes to transfer large files and sync data across long distances.
The software gives you deep visibility into how your applications are performing and how your bandwidth is being used. You can prioritize business-critical traffic over less important data, ensuring your most vital operations always have the resources they need. It is designed for mid-market and enterprise organizations with multiple branch offices or a significant remote workforce that relies on consistent network speed.
Cisco ThousandEyes
ThousandEyes gives you a complete view of the digital paths your data takes across the internet, cloud providers, and internal networks. You can see exactly how your users experience your applications, whether they are working from home, in an office, or accessing services via a third-party API. By mapping every hop between your users and your services, you can pinpoint exactly where delays or outages occur, even when the problem lies outside your own infrastructure.
The platform helps you reduce mean time to identify and resolve issues by providing actionable data you can share with service providers. You can monitor SaaS performance, optimize SD-WAN deployments, and ensure your customer-facing websites remain reachable and fast. It is designed for IT operations and network engineering teams at mid-market and enterprise organizations who rely on complex, distributed environments.
Overview
Riverbed SteelHead Features
- Data Streamlining Reduce your bandwidth consumption by up to 99% by only sending new or changed data across your network.
- Transport Streamlining Minimize the impact of high latency by reducing the number of round trips required for data to travel.
- Application Streamlining Accelerate specific protocols like HTTP, FTP, and SMB to ensure your web and file applications respond instantly.
- SaaS Acceleration Speed up popular tools like Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and ServiceNow by optimizing the path to the cloud.
- Path Selection Direct your traffic over the most efficient path available, whether it is MPLS, internet, or a satellite link.
- Centralized Management Control your entire optimization deployment from a single console to simplify configuration and reporting across all sites.
Cisco ThousandEyes Features
- Internet Insights. View a real-time map of global internet health to see if outages are affecting your users before they even report them.
- End-User Monitoring. Install lightweight agents on employee laptops to track the performance of critical applications like Zoom, Salesforce, and Microsoft Teams.
- Cloud Agent Network. Run tests from hundreds of pre-installed global locations to simulate how customers in different regions experience your digital services.
- BGP Route Visualization. Monitor your internet routing paths and get alerted when malicious hijacks or configuration errors redirect your traffic unexpectedly.
- Device Layer Discovery. Map your internal network topology automatically to see how physical hardware performance impacts the overall digital experience of your team.
- Shareable Snapshots. Generate interactive links of performance data to prove to ISPs or cloud providers exactly where their service is failing.
Pricing Comparison
Riverbed SteelHead Pricing
Cisco ThousandEyes Pricing
Pros & Cons
Riverbed SteelHead
Pros
- Drastically reduces file transfer times for remote offices
- Significantly lowers monthly bandwidth costs for expensive links
- Reliable performance for critical enterprise applications
- Excellent visibility into network traffic patterns
Cons
- Initial hardware or licensing costs are relatively high
- Requires technical expertise for complex initial configurations
- Encrypted traffic requires additional steps to optimize effectively
Cisco ThousandEyes
Pros
- Unmatched visibility into public internet and ISP performance
- Intuitive path visualization makes complex data easy to read
- Excellent for holding third-party service providers accountable
- Seamless integration with Cisco hardware and software ecosystems
Cons
- Pricing can be high for high-frequency monitoring
- Steep learning curve for advanced configuration and alerts
- Consumption-based credits require careful management to avoid overages