In an era defined by digital complexity and AI acceleration, organizations are facing growing pressure to ensure seamless performance across increasingly distributed IT environments. Enter Riverbed: a pioneer in observability and performance monitoring, now raising the bar on its unified AIOps platform vision and capabilities with significant enhancements unveiled this week.
Riverbed introduced a series of upgrades to its observability platform—anchored in Generative, Predictive, and Agentic AI capabilities and complemented by innovative data observability modules that extend visibility into unified communications, network packets, and Intel® Thunderbolt™/Wi-Fi-connected endpoints.
With this launch, Riverbed is delivering a unified AIOps platform that moves IT operations from reactive troubleshooting to proactive and automated performance assurance.
From Reactive to Predictive: A New Era of AI Observability
At the core of Riverbed’s announcement is the deep integration of advanced AI across its platform—providing immediate insights, intelligent automation, and predictive capabilities.
- Riverbed IQ Assist™ is a GenAI-powered assistant that transforms how IT teams resolve issues. Rather than requiring long chatbot threads or repetitive queries, IQ Assist surfaces context-aware answers and graphical root cause analysis instantly. It integrates directly with ITSM tools like ServiceNow and supports a growing library of generative use cases.
- Riverbed Predictive AI, integrated into IQ Ops™, leverages historical and real-time telemetry to flag anomalies before they become disruptions. Whether detecting resource constraints or anticipating network bottlenecks, Predictive AI acts as an early warning system that helps avoid costly downtime and ensures consistent digital experiences.
- Riverbed Agentic AI, a low-code/no-code automation engine that allows teams to orchestrate intelligent agents into IT workflows. These AI agents, powered by Riverbed’s Data Store, give IT the power to automate tasks like remediation and optimization—while still maintaining human oversight. Agentic AI will be generally available in Q2 2025.
Riverbed stated that these AI-driven remediations deliver significant time savings and value to organizations, who, in turn, vote with their checkbooks. According to CEO Dave Donatelli, Riverbed’s platform momentum helped drive a 102% increase in observability bookings in Q1 2025.
Eliminating Visibility Gaps with New Data Modules
Alongside AI enhancements, Riverbed announced three new data observability modules that are designed to eliminate visibility blind spots that plague today’s IT operations.
- Unified Communications (UC) Module – Video conferencing has become ubiquitous, yet UC-related help desk tickets remain stubbornly high. This new module brings real-time insight into platforms like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and WebEx, allowing IT teams to detect and resolve performance issues before user experience is impacted.
- NPM+ Packet Capture Module – A Zero Trust-ready endpoint packet capture solution that works across Windows, macOS, and Linux—this tool delivers deep network diagnostics even outside traditional perimeters. It also integrates directly with IQ Ops to automate analysis and remediation.
- Aternity for Intel® Thunderbolt™ and Wi-Fi – Powered by Intel’s Connectivity Analytics SDK, this module offers digital experience analytics for below-the-OS telemetry across Intel-powered peripherals. Enterprises gain visibility into the full connectivity ecosystem—from docks to monitors—ensuring consistent and seamless user experiences.
These modules are available through the Riverbed Unified Agent, which simplifies deployment while enabling holistic endpoint visibility.
Supporting Cloud, Virtualization, and AI Workloads
Riverbed’s announcement also includes critical updates to its Aternity solution for cloud-native and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments:
- Kubernetes Operator automates observability for microservices, accelerating deployment by up to 300%.
- VDI Intelligence expands real-time and multi-session support across platforms such as Citrix, IGEL, ChromeOS, Omnissa (formerly VMware), and Azure Virtual Desktop—bringing deeper visibility and performance control to virtualized user environments.
For organizations relying on virtual desktop strategies and microservices architecture, these enhancements streamline operations and improve user satisfaction.
Smart OTel™: Precision Observability for AI and Data-Driven Enterprises
As AI projects scale across enterprises, so too does the need for precise, relevant observability data. That’s where the previously announced Riverbed Smart OTel™ enters the picture—their innovative approach to eliminating the “firehose” effect of raw telemetry overload.
Smart OTel enables IT to extract the right data, integrate it with standard OTel collectors, and even convert third-party telemetry into actionable insights—further enriched by Riverbed’s AI-driven automation.
By focusing on high-value, filtered data streams, Smart OTel provides an elegant answer to the enterprise need for observability that supports—not overwhelms—AI and analytics platforms.
One Platform, Many Use Cases
Since launching the re-architected Riverbed Platform in 2024, the company has made it clear that it wants to solve the disparate point tool problem so many operations teams face. Riverbed’s open, AI-powered architecture spans the entire digital enterprise—from applications and networks to endpoints, cloud, and Zero Trust environments.
The unified AIOps platform is anchored by the Riverbed Data Store, which intelligently correlates data across domains while reducing noise. When paired with IQ Ops and the latest AI innovations, enterprises can get unified visibility and automated resolution capabilities at scale.
Final Thoughts
It is encouraging to see Riverbed continue to execute and innovate rapidly. This announcement represents more than a feature upgrade—it’s a big step toward delivering on the promise of AIOps. By blending automation, intelligence, and precision data collection into a unified platform, Riverbed is helping IT teams move beyond firefighting to proactive, predictive operations.
As digital ecosystems expand, platforms like Riverbed’s—built with enterprise-grade AI and open integrations—will be essential for organizations to drive greater operational efficiencies, better experiences and data-driven business outcomes.
To learn more about the launch and see the full webcast, visit: www.riverbed.com
