Companies can’t have many conversations with customers these days without talking about artificial intelligence and its implications, something that has been true in recent months for Riverbed Technology LLC. In the observability space, there’s been consolidation and change around how organizations use technology.

Given recent trends, Riverbed revealed new product announcements today. First, the company announced an open platform that covers observability across the enterprise, according to Dave Donatelli (pictured), chief executive officer of Riverbed Technology LLC.

“Then from that open platform, we went ahead and released our first set of products from there,” Donatelli said. “One of the challenges we see with customers today is that as IT continues to evolve and expand, a whole bunch of new blind spots have come out — zero-trust networks, now people can’t see what’s happening, or employees working from home, maybe connecting directly to the web, not traversing corporate networks.”

That’s created a big challenge, according to Donatelli. Some may wonder how to prevent problems and how to correct them when they do happen, he noted.

“That’s what these products are meant to do. From a platform perspective … it’s an open platform,” he said. “An easy way to think about it is this: We collect a lot of data, we analyze and we act on that data through AI automation. Then we report what we did.”

Dave Donatelli discusses how Riverbed is unveiling AI-powered observability platform intended to enhance digital operations.

Donatelli spoke to theCUBE Research executive analyst John Furrier at the Riverbed: New AI Solutions for Digital Experience event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed Riverbed’s AI-powered observability platform and how it is designed to enhance IT operations and improve digital experiences. (* Disclosure below.)

Streamlining data collection with an open platform

The announcement that the platform is open is also in the sense that Riverbed has open API. Companies can use not only Riverbed products with it, but also other products they’ve already invested in to simplify their environment, according to Donatelli.

“We made it easier to do things like more collection,” he said. “As an example, the platform we’re announcing today has a single common agent, and with that common agent has modules that you can plug into within that agent so that you can collect more data.”

Companies need agents to collect data, and while they may hate agents, they also need the data. The way to deal with that is a platform that has an open agent with it, according to Donatelli.

“That’s what we’ve done. Then, with the automate and analyze, we brought out our second generation data store for AI,” he said.

Technically speaking, if one goes to talk to a large enterprise, they may have 18 or more agents on any of their end user devices, which can be very painful to manage, Donatelli noted. Companies need to keep them up to date, and someone always wants a new agent.

“The political side of an agent is, typically, the person who has to load the agent, isn’t the person who’s actually using the technology at the end,” he said. “So, if you go tell someone and explain a product to them and say, ‘That’s great. I need that today.’ And then they say, ‘Oh man, now I’ve got to go talk to those guys and get in the queue to put an agent on. I don’t have time for this.’”

By going to a single agent technology, Riverbed solves that problem for them, according to Donatelli. That one agent, through the modules that can be plugged into, can do everything from looking at an endpoint to looking at one’s network.

Real-data foundation focus of AI advancements

There is, of course, an AI tailwind that Riverbed is walking into with this announcement. AI really gets into the analyze and automate part of the architecture, Donatelli noted.

“About 18 months ago, we released a product called Riverbed IQ. As part of today’s announcement, we’re releasing Riverbed 2.0,” he said. “The good news is, we’re not a PowerPoint player in AI. We actually have real products. They’ve been in the market; they’re doing real things.”

Good AI, of course, comes from good, accurate data, and if one is using simulated data, they can come up with inaccurate answers. That’s why Riverbed uses real data 100% of the time, having built a data store that can scale very high into petabytes, according to Donatelli.

“Why is that so important? Because I know from my background — I’ve been in data my entire career — it’s extremely difficult for customers to build their own data repositories,” he said. “There’s a lot of challenges to do that, and you need the data before you can even do the AI. We’ve taken all that work out of the customer. We’ve built that repository; it scales very high. Then from that repository, we can analyze and correlate issues and do automated remediations.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of the Riverbed: New AI Solutions for Digital Experience event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Riverbed: New AI Solutions for Digital Experience event. Neither Riverbed Technology LLC, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE