Sifting for Digital Diamonds By Bob Faulkner About this article: A few months ago I wrote about Riverbed as a good candidate to have its fundamentals buck the economic downtrend. The company makes the Steelhead family of appliances (i.e., hardware/software) that accelerate wide-area-network (WAN) access. In this market, it is the industry leader. Riverbed's customers report that application performance increases 5 to 50 times prior levels along with a 60% to 95% reduction in bandwidth utilization. Consequently, an IT manager may be able to scale back to a slower and lower cost connection or avoid the need to spend on a more expensive link. Either way, those are real dollars saved. What makes the solution even more attractive is that it doesn't require a massive upfront expenditure. Riverbed offers Steelhead appliances across a broad spectrum of sizes and prices. The company's typical "purchase" is less than $100,000 and, according to IDC, Steelhead appliance customers' average return on investment... Or, call us at 1-866-321-TSCM (8726) Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-6 p.m. ET. Outside the U.S. and in Canada, call 1-212-321-5200. More Stories From RealMoney Durable Goods Up Move Down the Tech Food Chain Jobless Claims Still High Bulls' Tenacity Is the Big Question Mark Should You Buy It? Pharmaceutical Product Development Bad News Trumps All Support for Banks Holds, For Now Bummer, Yields Are on the Rise Money on the Line Makes a Big Difference Structured Products: Unsafe at Any Price MORE STORIES FROM REALMONEY

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