Enabling Customers to Opti mise Their Networks is Key

Enabling Customers to Optimise Their Networks is Key

Mena Migally, Senior Director, MENA at Riverbed Technology, speaks about how his company has put its top priority is protecting health and safety of our employees, partners, customers, vendors, and the community at large

During this COVID-19 crisis, what measures have you undertaken to continue your own business without disruption?

At Riverbed, our top priority is protecting health and safety of our employees, partners, customers, vendors, and the community at large. We have taken many steps to address the health and safety of our teams over the past few weeks including a constituted a work from home policy for all Riverbed employees and contractors inline with official Government regulations. Given that as a company we have always focused on accelerating the performance and visibility for networks and applications, which includes software-based solutions that specifically optimize remote working, we are very fortunate that we can leverage our own technology so that our employees can continue to be highly productive and the performance and access to the networks and applications remains unprecedented wherever they work in order to continue to support our customers business. We have been encouraging our teams across the world to increase the use of collaboration tools, with more conference calls, and particularly the use of video, so everyone can see and interact with their work colleagues on a regular basis.

What measures and initiatives have been taken to provide uninterrupted service to customers?

In response to the challenges businesses are facing, we are offering complimentary 90-day Riverbed Client Accelerator trial licenses to all our existing customers worldwide. This solution has consistently demonstrated its ability to optimize at-home network connections to achieve up to 99% data reduction while delivering 10x faster, reliable performance of cloud, on-prem, and SaaS applications. In recent weeks, we have seen a 6x increase in web traffic to our Client Accelerator webpage in less than a month and over 350 Client Accelerator 90-day trial requests from enterprise customers.

Which top industry verticals and markets have you seen the maximum traction? How has COVID-19 impacted business with existing customers in those verticals and markets?

As organizations are quickly getting more equipped for mobile ‘working from home’ workforces, we are seeing a huge uplift in demand across the world in all industries including Aerospace, Consumer Goods manufacturing, Government, Oil and Gas, Pharmaceutical, Healthcare, Financial Services and Insurance, Professional and Consulting services.

Have you put in place any contingency plans if this crisis persists or gets escalated?

Currently, our focus has been on enabling our customers to optimize their networks and efficiently manage the surge in the number of work-from-home employees while ensuring they are equipped to be productive. A large part of this centres around ensuring the performance and security of digital services, even as employees move from local network access to remote network access models. In the long term, it is unlikely that the way people work will return to normal – in fact, Gartner has predicted that by 2030, the demand for remote work will increase by 30% due to Gen Z fully entering the workforce. As organisations adjust to this 'new norm', Riverbed will work to empower our partners and our customers to refocus on the future. We will do so by helping them maximise network and application performance to support all workers - anywhere, anytime, and via any delivery method. At the same time, we aim to help them reduce risk by increasing visibility into their hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

What sort of business and financial impact do you expect for your business as a result of COVID-19?

The challenges organisations have faced as they adapt to the ‘new norm’ has highlighted the vital importance of network and application performance in facilitating business continuity. There is no doubt that in the long term, businesses across all verticals will double down on their IT investments to support more flexible workplace arrangements. This will make Riverbed more relevant than ever and we fully expect to extend our engagements with existing customers while simultaneously penetrating new enterprise accounts.