Riverbed this week announced that its SteelFusion IT edge technology now supports Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization. Additionally, Riverbed announced that its SD-WAN technology SteelConnect now integrates with Microsoft’s Azure Virtual WAN.

Riverbed’s SteelFusion converges intelligent storage cache, WAN optimization, and virtualization into a centrally-managed platform for the IT edge. The technology replaces all traditional edge infrastructure and was purpose-built for the remote edge.

Alison Hubbard, senior director of product marketing at Riverbed, said, “Previously, SteelFusion has been available out-of-box for VMware environments only. But we’re announcing October availability for native Microsoft Windows Server environments for Hyper-V."

Microsoft’s Hyper-V is its virtualization technology that competes against VMware’s vSphere.

Organizations that have selected Hyper-V as their hypervisor of choice will be able to use SteelFusion to instantly deploy and centrally manage edge services, data, and applications to any number of remote branches and sites.

“For the first time, we’re making a virtual SteelFusion edge run on software only,” said Hubbard. “Since it’s completely software-defined, it’s super easy for anyone to deploy as long as they have Hyper-V running on the appropriately-sized commodity server.”

In addition to bringing functions to the edge, SteelFusion continuously sends remote data back to the data center. “We don’t want IP left vulnerable and far away from where we have control,” said Hubbard. “We continuously send data back to the data center. Any data in flight is encrypted. Instead of delivering all that goodness only to VMware users, we are now able to deliver it to Hyper-V users on a completely software-defined-deployment.”

In other news, Riverbed and Microsoft announced integration between Riverbed’s SteelConnect SD-WAN and Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN, a global network backbone for managed site-to-site and branch-to-Azure connectivity.

Microsoft just this week made its Azure Virtual WAN generally available. It provides unified, global connectivity and security to allow the deployment of large-scale branch infrastructure.

“Think of it as a global network backbone,” said Milind Bhise, senior director of product marketing at Riverbed. “We are announcing SteelConnect support. Customers of Riverbed SteelConnect can automate connectivity from their branches to Azure and integrate Azure Virtual WAN with the rest of their enterprise network.”

Asked if this is similar to the global network that the SD-WAN vendor Aryaka provides, Bhise said, “To a certain extent it’s a fair comparison. But Microsoft has significant PoPs and a global network. Microsoft has a far bigger footprint.”

He specified that Microsoft is not getting into SD-WAN. “This is a joint solution,” said Bhise. “The SD-WAN comes from Riverbed; the network backbone comes from Microsoft.”

Riverbed’s SteelConnect SD-WAN product provides unified connectivity and orchestration spanning the entire network – WAN, LAN/WLAN, data center and the cloud and now, optimization into Microsoft Azure.

Earlier this year, Riverbed announced that SteelConnect supports Azure ExpressRoute with automated “single-click” connectivity.