Riverbed Launches MSP Program as Company Revamps Overall Channel Approach | CRN

Network News

Gina Narcisi

May 08, 2023, 8:30 am EDT

Riverbed Channel chief Alex Thurber is putting his stamp on the company’s global channel with a new program geared towards MSPs serving middle-market customers as the company grows its unified observability and digital experience business, Flood .

Riverbed launched a new channel program geared towards middle-market MSPs, a new demographic for the longstanding enterprise-focused company.

Riverbed’s Alluvio Commercial Exclusive, or ACE, program, introduced on Monday, targets MSP partners serving SMBs and new Alluvio Aternity Digital Experience Management (DEM) customers as Riverbed looks to scale its unified observability and digital experience business .

Alex Thurber, senior vice president, global partners and alliances for Riverbed, who has been at the helm for a little over a year, told CRN that the ACE program is just the beginning of a revamp of Riverbed Rise’s partner program.

“Next year we will have a very different partner environment than we have today,” said Thurber.

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Riverbed in 2022 unveiled its two core brands: Riverbed Acceleration and Flood by Riverbed, reflecting the company’s strong focus and investment in unified observability to bring together network and application data and insights for enterprise and channel partners.

Alluvium Aternity DEM combines IT service benchmarking, end-user experience monitoring, application performance monitoring and device performance monitoring. The offering can provide insight into business-critical applications and measure end-user experience, according to the San Francisco-based provider.

“As a company, we’re very focused on that Fortune 2,000 company, the largest companies in the world. What we’ve realized is that there are opportunities for Aternity in that next level of business — that commercial market — they can really get some gains and benefits from the technology itself, both from the cost savings, and from the experience management side, but we are not designed to sell in that market,” Thurber said.

It was the impetus for the company to develop the ACE program for MSP partners who could bring Aternity to their SMB customers and help Riverbed expand that side of the business, Thurber said. “[The midmarket] it’s the perfect market segment for scale,” he said.

Aternity DEM will go 100% through the channel. “This is truly the first time Riverbed has looked to expand its potential market opportunity. I think it’s great for the business, great for the partner community, and ultimately great for the customers because a next generation of customers will have access to the benefits of Aternity,” he said.

The total global addressable market for observability in the middle market space is well over $200 million, and that’s at just 10 percent market penetration, Thurber said.

The channel boss said the ACE program launched first in Europe and will move quickly to North America. From there, the program could fit naturally into the Latin American and Asian markets for commercial customers in those geographies, Thurber said. The company is kicking off the initially invitation-only program by integrating some of its longtime partners into ACE who have their own MSP and professional services businesses.