Ex-Cisco veteran Bridget Bisnette has been formally announced as global Riverbed channel chief, along with a much more simplified – and very different – channel program aimed at penetrating lower into the enterprise and midmarket from Riverbed’s traditional sweet spot.
Riverbed and ZScaler partner again, this time on an integration around SteelConnect SD-WAN cloud networking that increases customer agility by automating ZScaler’s security capabilities within.
Riverbed provided an update to partners on where they are in enhancing their services and partner competencies, and also promised a new partner portal is on the way.
At their Partner Event. Riverbed highlighted the success of Kentucky-based Tier 3 Technologies, which transitioned from an on-prem VAR to a SteelFusion and SteelCentral-focused MSP in less than three years.
The integration of two companies with fundamentally different partner bases poses specific challenges, but also creates new opportunities.
Riverbed delineated the progress it has made in its cloud strategy over the past year – while also giving Cisco a backhanded compliment for providing leads for Riverbed SD-WAN solutions.
Riverbed looks to enhance partners’ selling motions around SteelCentral with a new toolkit to show off the Aternity technology acquired last year to customers.
Riverbed Reach, which was announced at last year’s partner event, went live two months ago, and its enablement of partners’ digital value proposition efforts is already bearing fruit.
Riverbed is making significant announcements today around its SteelConnect, SteelCentral and SteelFusion product lines.
At Riverbed’s partner event, their Chief Strategy Officer outlined a complex and model-driven paradigm of how modern IT services are being transformed digitally, and his view of how the company and its partners need to respond. Interestingly, partners seemed to get it.
A key component of the new strategy is Riverbed Reach, a new marketing program the company announced at its Partner Summit event.
Riverbed CEO Jerry Kennelly kicked off Riverbed’s partner event with a forceful keynote in which he stated that Riverbed’s move into SD-WAN will move the company into mainstream networking and create a massive new market opportunity for both Riverbed and its partners, who are their entire route to market.
Riverbed adds new tracks for integrators and managed services, extends rebates and incentives, and is aiming to have all its offerings capable to being offered by partners on a subscription basis by the end of 2016.
Alan Grahame looks to strengthen the Glue sales teams, including channel managers, expand their SaaS business, and continue to move their business beyond Cisco.
With the new Avnet Knowledge Network, the distributor is aiming to bring all of its support and training offerings under the same roof.
The new Riverbed-Ready program is for ISVs partners, and is designed to spur new and more full featured solutions which cover all the elements of Riverbed’s Application Performance Platform, but solution provider partners are also expected to benefit significantly.
