Riverbed Names Former Virtana CRO Alex Thurber As New Channel Chief

Tech veteran Alex Thurber will oversee the entire channel ecosystem for Riverbed|Aternity in a brand-new role for the company.

Riverbed Technology, which recently rebranded to Riverbed|Aternity, has brought on Alex Thurber as its new channel lead, the company announced on Wednesday.

Riverbed CEO Dan Smoot in a recent interview with CRN called partners “force multipliers” and crucial to the company’s strategy.

“We’re a customer-first, partner-led company, and that’s why we’re excited to bring on a new partner ecosystem leader who I’m really excited about and whom I‘ve known a long time. We’re going to continue to invest and make sure that we‘re leveraging the channel,” Smoot said.

[Related: Riverbed CEO Focused On ‘Disruption’ In Network Observability Space In 2022]

Thurber in a new role for the company as senior vice president of global partners and alliances will lead the company’s entire partner ecosystem of VARs, distributors, service providers and solution providers and focus on accelerating business opportunities and ensuring market and customer needs are being met, Riverbed said.

Thurber comes to Riverbed after serving as chief revenue officer for multicloud management vendor Virtana Corp. for more than a year. Prior to that, he served as CRO for Pulse Secure, a developer of secure access and mobile security technology, until the company was acquired by Ivanti. Thurber also sat in the senior vice president, general manager seat of BlackBerry’s Mobility Solutions business unit for two years, as well as vice president of worldwide sales for WatchGuard Technologies. Before that, the tech veteran held sales leadership roles at Tripwire, McAfee, and Cisco Systems.

“I’m really excited about the rapid progress Riverbed|Aternity has made on both the visibility/observability and acceleration sides of the business,” Thurber said in an email to CRN. “Our leadership is absolutely committed to continuing to be a channel-led company and we have a unique growth and market opportunity to help our collective customers drive performance and deliver an exceptional digital experience.”

The company also announced Wednesday it appointed Craig McCullough to senior vice president of public sector, to lead the company’s business focused on its U.S. federal, state and local government customers. Both Thurber and McCullough will report to Shaun Bierweiler, Riverbed’s CRO, the company said.

San Francisco-based Riverbed has been working with a third-party firm to improve its entire partner ecosystem and all the partners the company wants to serve, Smoot said.

“We’ve had a very strong traditional resale capability; very strong relationship with our distributors. But we want to expand our capabilities with more tech alliances [and] expand our relationships across the entire partner ecosystem as a whole,” he said.

Smoot said that Riverbed had been searching for a leader who had the experience to be able to pull the pieces and routes to market together to help the company execute on its revised channel strategy.

“We’re thrilled to death that we actually found that individual that has that balance across all routes to market,” he said.