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Riverbed Technology has built its growing business on accelerating application performance across wide area networks (WAN).

Akamai Technologies has built its billion-dollar business on pushing Web content closer to the edge by mirroring caches across thousands of servers spread all over the world.

Independently, the two companies address the issue of application accessibility and performance. Now they are banking on their future business accelerating by teaming up to develop complementary technologies that will enable both companies to cross the public-private network boundary.

The partnership was announced yesterday, but no product is currently available. Both companies tell Channelnomics that development and integration work is well underway and the fruits of their efforts are forthcoming. The initial foray of this alliance will likely produce an add-on or upgrade for the Riverbed Steelhead WAN Optimization appliance that will enable Akamai to traverse the network perimeter to deliver accelerated Web-based applications.

“What we’re doing is having Akamai come into the data center. What end users will see is that both hops of the applications will be the same,” explained Apurva Dave, director of product marketing at Riverbed.

Riverbed and Akamai formed the relationship based on two core elements: technical architecture and implementation. And they’re both chasing the same pool of business, namely by the increasing use of Web-based and network-based applications.

Many enterprise users take for granted that Web- and server-based applications simply work, and that performance is a matter of speed. Riverbed is designed around reinforcing that perception by caching data and application elements locally, speeding up performance. Akamai does essentially the same thing; rather than having information stored on a central server that forces users across numerous hops, Akamai puts content at the closest spot to the user.

How this partnership will play out from a technology and product perspective remains undetermined, as do the pricing and channel models. Both companies admit they still have to figure out how they will enable partners to resell and support the service.

The two companies’ technologies may be complementary, but their business models are not. Riverbed is a product company that sells on appliance sales and software licensing. Akamai is a services company that bills on recurring payment model.  Merging the two into a seamless package that is beneficial to customers and rewarding to partners without increasing the perceivable cost of sales to all the companies in the value chain will be challenge.

Riverbed and Akamai say they will not launch a product without taking the channel into consideration and fully enabling their respective partners to capitalize on the public-private WAN optimization opportunity.

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Lawrence M. Walsh is CEO and president of The 2112 Group, a technology business advisory service that specializes in optimizing indirect channels and partner relationships. He’s also the executive director of the Channel Vanguard Council. He is the former publisher of Channel Insider and editor of VARBusiness Magazine. You can reach him at lmwalsh@the2112group.com.

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Larry Walsh: @lmwalsh2112 | Channelnomics: @channelnomics