Riverbed Technology, Inc. Named ``Cool Vendor'' by Leading Analyst Firm; Vendors Selection Based on Innovation, Market Impact and Intrigue.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 6, 2004

Riverbed Technology, Inc. has been included in the list of "Cool Vendors" in the March 26, 2004 report, "Cool Vendors in the Enterprise Networking World," by M. Fabbi, T. Chamberlain, S. Cramoysan, D. Fraley, B. Hafner, S. Blood, L. Orans and P. Redman at Gartner, Inc.

The report included a review of the enterprise networking industry and examined the market's transition from private, legacy technologies to converged networks. In the report, Gartner said that recent sluggish economic growth has not dampened the pace of innovation in the networking industry.

"With our launch just weeks away, it's great to see customers and analysts embrace Riverbed's unique approach for optimizing application performance across the enterprise WAN," said Steve McCanne, Chief Technology Officer, Riverbed. "We believe Gartner's recognition of our company has confirmed our own beliefs that we have addressed real and pressing customer pain points in a manner that is superior and differentiated from our competitors."

Riverbed's WAN optimization solution addresses both the bandwidth and latency issues associated with improving application performance over a distributed network. Through two technologies, Scalable Data Referencing and Transaction Prediction, Riverbed is able to deliver LAN-like performance across typical WAN connections. The company is currently completing its Steelhead appliance beta program with 15 enterprise customers.

About Gartner's Cool Vendors Selection Process

Gartner's listing does not constitute an exhaustive list of vendors in any given technology area, but rather is designed to highlight interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness of a particular purpose.

Gartner defines a cool vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are: Innovative, enable users to do things they couldn't do before; Impactful, have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology); Intriguing, have caught Gartner's interest or curiosity in approximately the past six months.

About Riverbed Technology

Riverbed Technology develops solutions to enable enterprises to simplify and consolidate their IT infrastructure without compromising local application performance. Riverbed's Steelhead appliances make the most commonly used distributed systems running across the wide area network (WAN) perform up to 100 times faster. Riverbed was founded in 2002 by CEO Jerry M. Kennelly and chief technology officer Dr. Steve McCanne, a visionary recently identified by M.I.T.'s Technology Review as one of the top 100 young innovators in the world. Riverbed has received funding from Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and UV Partners, and has an engineering team that includes veterans from Microsoft, Inktomi, and Network Appliance. For more information, visit www.riverbed.com.