From the official Riverbed RiOS 5.0 announcement:
“[]announced the launch of version 5.0 of the Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS(TM)), which powers the award-winning Riverbed(R) Steelhead(R) product line. RiOS 5.0 extends the Riverbed lead in delivering to its customers the best speed for the broad range of applications important to businesses of every size and across all industries. With the introduction of RiOS 5.0, Riverbed is the first vendor to provide application-level protocol optimization for Microsoft Exchange 2007. This makes Riverbed the first and the only vendor to accelerate Microsoft Exchange 2000, 2003 and 2007. In addition, Riverbed is building upon its lead in delivering solutions to enhance IT flexibility and capabilities with new scale, simplicity and security features, including the new RiOS Services Platform (RSP) for delivering virtualized edge services without the need to deploy additional branch office servers.
Riverbed has expanded its support for Microsoft Exchange environments and is the first WDS vendor to deliver a protocol optimization specifically for the Exchange 2007 protocol (MAPI 2K7) at the application layer. Riverbed is the only vendor that provides application-level optimization for Exchange 2000, 2003 and 2007.
More Application-Level Acceleration
In RiOS 5.0, Riverbed adds to its existing HTTP and HTTPS acceleration capabilities by further improving the performance of enterprise Web applications, including SAP NetWeaver, Oracle, PeopleSoft/JD Edwards, Microsoft and Siebel CRM, SharePoint, and Outlook Web Access (OWA). In RiOS 5.0, Riverbed can further reduce the chattiness and delay often associated with enterprise Web-based applications. Users of RiOS 5.0 will see additional performance improvements of up to 10X for their Web applications.
RiOS 5.0 also delivers acceleration capabilities for Oracle 11i applications running in HTTP mode. This acceleration builds on the existing RiOS support for Oracle 11i Jinitiator socket mode optimization and targets the Oracle E-Business suite of applications, particularly Oracle forms traffic and reporting, as well as other application operations. Riverbed is the only vendor that provides application-level optimization for Oracle 11i.“Â