Industry veteran Karl Meulema has been appointed channel chief at Riverbed Technology (RVBD), the company announced this week. Meulema, whose resume includes executive positions at Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Avaya, replaces former Riverbed channel chief Randy Schirman, who left the company last month for WAN virtualization startup Talari Networks.
In his new role, Meulema will be responsible for helping partners to better understand and sell the Riverbed portfolio and drive the company’s overarching goal of expanding beyond the WAN optimization market and into integrated network solutions.
“We will be making sure that, from a programmatic perspective, we very strongly support the strategic direction Riverbed is taking, where we are really focusing on becoming a much more platform-centric company and driving our total portfolio to the market instead of point products,” Meulema said in an interview with CRN. “So much of our business relies on the channel, so we need to make sure partners are following that same direction and feel supported by our programs.”
Prior to taking on his new role at Riverbed, Meulema was vice president of Global Services and Partners at Avaya. He also served in several executive level positions at Cisco Systems, including tenure as the company’s senior vice president of Global Strategy and Operations.
Meulema marks the second ex-Cisco executive to join the Riverbed team in as many months, with the company recently hiring Paul Mountford to run its sales operation as chief sales officer and senior vice president. In May, the company renamed its entire product portfolio as the Riverbed Application Performance Platform to better reflect value, and achieved VMware Ready-vCloud Air status for several of its solutions.
Earlier this month, Riverbed announced that it would be restructuring its business and working to trim costs in light of pressure from shareholder Elliot Management, according to CRN. The WAN optimization company also lowered its third-quarter financial outlook to reflect its issues, estimating revenue between $276 million and $277 million down from previous forecasts of $285 million and 295 million.
