Riverbed appoints Keith Hoskison

Riverbed Technology says that Keith Hoskison has been appointed Senior Vice President, Worldwide Channels and Strategic Account Programs, reporting to David Peranich, President, Worldwide Field Operations. In a company that realises the vast majority of its revenue through a channel sales model, this key position will be responsible for Riverbed’s global partner strategy, execution, and strategic sales programs.

Hoskison brings to Riverbed over 25 years of executive sales and marketing experience in the IT management, networking, application delivery, virtualisation, cloud, storage, unified communications and mobility markets. During his career at such companies as BMC Software, Aruba Networks and Cisco Systems, he has specialised in architecting and executing strategic relationship management programs targeting global accounts, channel partners, and strategic alliances. This experience will be critical as Riverbed moves forward on its new and expansive product and market strategy designed for growth.

“Application performance is business performance. The modern enterprise needs to have the flexibility to host apps and data in the most optimal locations to ensure the highest productivity, most robust security and the lowest TCO. We call this location-independent computing and together with our partners, Riverbed offers the most complete platform for location-independent computing, which ensures applications perform as expected, data is always available when needed and performance issues are detected and fixed before end users even notice – regardless of where apps and data are hosted,” said David Peranich, President of Worldwide Field Operations at Riverbed. “Keith’s experience will be instrumental as we move from tactical selling to consultative relationship building with CXOs to sell our complete platform for location-independent computing. He will also be responsible for driving new channel initiatives and programs, and expanding our relationships with service providers, system integrators and VARs as they embrace and extend our platform.”

“I couldn’t be more excited to join at this strategic inflection point in Riverbed’s history,” said Hoskison. “Riverbed has transformed from a single-product company to a platform company, and with its expanded product set is well-positioned to address a market more than 10 times the size of its original market. The Riverbed Application Performance Platform solves fundamental computing challenges that affect millions of people. This is an amazing opportunity for growth – for me personally as well as for the company.”

Prior to joining Riverbed, Hoskison was vice president, strategic accounts at BMC Software where he architected and implemented a strategic accounts program that drove growth and increased overall customer satisfaction. Before that, he was vice president, Americas, at Enterasys where he led a global sales team, direct and indirect. Before that, he was vice president, worldwide channels at Aruba Networks where he built a sales and partnering operations team that played a strategic role in the company’s successful IPO. And before that, he was vice president of channels and alliances at Cisco Systems, where he held a number of management and executive positions through an 11-year career that culminated in his role as VP of Channels and Alliances.