Riverbed Technology has announced updates to the Riverbed Performance Partner Programme aimed at further increasing collaboration with the channel to capitalise on the enormous market opportunities being created by the move to the cloud, digital transformation and evolving channel dynamics. Partners play a vital role in guiding Riverbed’s channel and market strategy as it develops new solutions that solve the complex challenges of cloud-based, software-defined IT environments.
At its recent partner summit, Riverbed showcased its solutions in three key areas and how partners can leverage them to accelerate their cloud and digital strategies and solutions with end customers: cloud networking (with marketing-leading SD-WAN solution SteelConnect) and end-to-end visibility and a service delivery platform (for delivery of –as-a-service offerings). Riverbed also shared its vision for addressing customers’ cloud first environments and the emerging SD-WAN market by sharing use cases and mapping Riverbed’s solutions to the broader market and partner opportunities.
With the enhancement of it partner programme, Riverbed unveiled more partner incentives that build upon the existing programme benefits of joint engagement, embedded solution and services, and selling across the Riverbed solution portfolio with accelerators to drive growth for partners. In addition, Riverbed is investing in building a full suite of services that partners can leverage to develop their services portfolio, including SD-WAN-as-a-service, Visibility-as-a-Service, Network-as-a-Service and Branch-as-a-Service, needed to support their customers implementing and operating cloud-first strategies.
These announcements further Riverbed’s efforts to help drive mutual growth opportunities with partners. In the past year Riverbed has:
- Launched programmes to enable its channel to build embedded and managed services, including subscription licensing and pricing sold via the channel to meet the evolving buying needs of customers.
- Launched a Riverbed Consulting Partner track to enable key partners to better support customers by delivering Riverbed franchise professional services.
- Expanded the benefits of Riverbed Reach, an end-to-end customisable channel marketing programme designed to help partners generate pipeline.
The company’s position has always been clear and remains unchanged: partners are a key component of Riverbed’s go-to-market strategy with more than 95 per cent of Riverbed’s business flowing through the channel.
“As customers continue to go digital and cloud first, it opens up significant growth potential for our partners with Riverbed’s disruptive SD-WAN, visibility and software-defined edge solutions, along with our continued leadership in WAN optimisation. Earlier this year, we also launched the Riverbed Service Delivery Platform for service providers and partners to enable their network-as-a-service strategy,” said Karl Meulema, Senior Vice President Global Channels at Riverbed. “Our platform approach makes us the ideal go-to-market partner in this dynamic industry. It is not only about what we can do better than others, it’s about what we can do that other vendors simply can’t.”
The Riverbed channel ecosystem is composed of a network of focused, dedicated and invested partners across the globe; including technology resellers, solution providers, value added distributors, system integrators and outsourcers and service providers. Working together, Riverbed and its channel ecosystem are providing solutions that improve the performance, operational efficiency, agility and economics of applications, services, networks, and remote and branch offices.