Riverbed Qualified Several Partners

Riverbed Technology has qualified members of the Riverbed Partner Network (RPN) to provide support services to Riverbed customers through the Riverbed Authorized Support Partner (RASP) program.

Launched in March of 2010, the RASP program extends the ability of Riverbed to provide enterprises with world-class support that helps them to fully leverage the value of their Riverbed investment through a network of qualified partners. Riverbed customers that work with RASP-qualified partners are able to reduce the costs and time associated with managing their IT infrastructure by engaging with a single point of contact for all pre-sales and post-sales support inquiries.

The RASP program is intended to help Riverbed scale its support organization while maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction with Riverbed, its products and partners. The RASP program has high assessment criteria to ensure that the quality of support delivered to Riverbed customers is exceptional. Only partners that demonstrate and provide a distinguished level of support are admitted into this highly regarded program. The requirements for becoming a RASP partner are stringent – among these requirements is the ability to provide 24×7 customer support as well as the ability to speak to customers in their local language.

Partners that have qualified for
and joined the RASP program include:

• Global: Orange Business Services
• Americas: Akibia, Forsythe, RKON Technology, Tiburon Associates LLC
• Asia Pacific: Datacraft, Expernet, Gen-i, Genesis Technology, M.Tech, Netmarks (Japan and Philippines), O2 Networks, VADS, Shanghai Dian Software Tech Co. Ltd
• Europe: Proact, RanTek, Teneo, S4E S.A.

Acceptance into the RASP program enables partners to build closer relationships with enterprise customers as trusted suppliers of products, services and support. In addition, partners are positioned to offer additional services from their portfolio that customers can leverage to obtain the full benefit of not only their Riverbed deployments, but their comprehensive IT infrastructure.

"The partner network program is structured so that everyone wins – our partners, customers and Riverbed. Through the RASP specialization program, not only do our partners benefit from being positioned to increase their bottom line, but our customers are working with the industry’s most qualified Riverbed partners to support their IT infrastructure," said Scott Downie, vice president of worldwide support at Riverbed. "As we scale our support organization to include services from our valued partners, it allows Riverbed to focus on our core competencies – providing enterprises with award-winning WAN optimization solutions that enable them to accomplish strategic IT initiatives, including IT consolidation, cloud computing and virtualization."

For the Riverbed partner community, the RASP program becomes one more benefit of the RPN that enriches their overall relationship with Riverbed, while giving them the opportunity to offer competitive differentiation in the marketplace from other partners within the RPN who cannot offer customers Level 1 and Level 2 support for Riverbed. By introducing specialization programs like RASP, as well as other programs to provide end users with training or Riverbed-focused professional services, Riverbed brings the total value of its enhanced channel partnerships to its customers, creating a business partner engagement model that offers a superior overall customer experience with Riverbed and its products.