Riverbed has launched a set of new Aternity products and features centred on what it calls a Zero Disruption approach to digital employee experience. The updates include broader session replay tools and new AI observability functions.
The changes are intended to move IT teams from reacting after employees report incidents to detecting and resolving problems earlier. In total, the announcement includes six product updates across Aternity, Riverbed IQ and related services.
One of the main additions is Aternity Replay 2.0. The tool expands replay from individual user sessions to device fleets, allowing IT teams to review what employees saw during a problem without asking them to recreate the issue.
Broader AI tracking
Another new feature, AI Assurance, is intended to give organisations more visibility into AI use in the workplace. It is designed to help IT teams monitor AI adoption, unsanctioned AI activity, operating costs and the behaviour of AI agents as such tools become more common in business workflows.
Riverbed also introduced High Frequency Analytics, a unified agent module that captures telemetry at one-second intervals across devices, applications and networks. This is meant to help identify short-lived or intermittent issues that can be missed when data is collected less frequently.
In application monitoring, Riverbed unveiled APM+, which links application behaviour and transactions with employee experience data. The aim is to help service desk and IT operations teams trace the source of issues across enterprise applications.
Elsewhere, Riverbed updated its intelligence layer with IQ 4.0, designed to support more autonomous IT operations. It includes what the company described as an agentic framework for authorised AI-driven actions, workflow creation, natural language interaction and tailored experiences for different IT roles.
Fast data transfer
Riverbed Q serves as the conversational interface for that wider system. It is designed to work with tools such as Microsoft Teams, ServiceNow and Slack so users can interact with IT operations data and workflows in natural language.
Alongside the software changes, new software-as-a-service additions to Data Express will support data transfers between AWS, Oracle OCI and enterprise data centres. Riverbed said the service can move operational and AI data at up to 10 times the speed of traditional alternatives while cutting costs by up to 30%.
Riverbed's broader argument is that digital employee experience tools should not stop at measuring disruption after it happens. Instead, it is advocating a prevention-first model built on a common data foundation spanning devices, networks and applications.
"Riverbed is now shipping our third generation of AI for digital employee experience, where AI moves beyond chatbots and self-service to help organisations proactively prevent disruption before employees are impacted," said Dave Donatelli, Chief Executive Officer, Riverbed.
"Riverbed is uniquely positioned to lead this transformation because we combine more than 25 years of expertise across applications, networks, devices, and AIOps with a unified data and intelligence architecture purpose-built for autonomous IT operations. Today, our AI is already operating at massive scale across many of the world's largest brands, helping enterprises reduce disruption and advance toward autonomous operations," added Donatelli.
Preventing operational risk
Riverbed linked the new products to the growing complexity of workplace IT environments, where hybrid work, cloud software and AI tools have introduced new sources of operational risk. It said its platform combines observability data from across the digital estate through a unified agent.
A customer reference in the announcement highlighted how companies are using the platform as part of broader operational automation efforts. Global Credit Union said it has been using Riverbed tools to improve visibility across networks, applications and end-user experience.
"The Riverbed Platform has transformed how we monitor our environment, providing full fidelity visibility and unified observability across networks, applications, and end user experience," said Douglas Horner, Senior Vice President of IM Operations, Global Credit Union.
"Building on that foundation, we have developed our AI driven operations capability to proactively diagnose issues faster, optimise performance at scale, and deliver secure, high quality digital experiences for our members. We are especially aligned with Riverbed's Zero Disruption vision, advancing a prevention first approach that stops issues before they impact colleagues, operations, or user experience," added Horner.
Industry analysts are also framing the shift as a response to the growing burden on IT teams. Riverbed cited the need to manage increasingly distributed systems while keeping service quality stable for both employees and customers.
"Modern IT environments are increasingly distributed and complex. Managing hybrid work, cloud services, and AI-assisted workflows requires IT to shift its focus from 'zero tickets' to 'zero disruption,'" said Bob Laliberte, Principal Analyst, theCUBE Research.
"Riverbed is driving this prevention-first approach by combining full-fidelity telemetry across devices, networks, and applications with experience insights. Together, these capabilities enable IT teams to improve visibility across complex, distributed environments while accelerating the identification and resolution of issues before they affect employee productivity or customer experience," added Laliberte.
Riverbed said customers carried out more than 250 million AI-driven automation steps during 2025, a figure it used to illustrate the scale of AI and automation now being applied in enterprise IT environments.