EDITOR’S QUESTION
EDITOR’S QUESTION
Joint operations
with ME partners
Riverbed on creating
a partner services
economy
The five guiding principles of
consistency, predictability,
cross product and services,
value-base and simplicity are
vital for growth says Elie Dib,
Senior Managing Director,
METNA at Riverbed.
P
artners are a key component of our
go-to-market and 100 per cent of
Riverbed’s business in the Middle
East comes through the channel. Our
strategy for the channel is straightforward:
build a portfolio of partners who can cover
us in all our areas of business.
Riverbed’s integrated platform enables
organisations to modernise their networks
and applications with industry-leading
SD-WAN, application acceleration and
visibility solutions. We are making
resource, programme and IP investments
designed to engage with our partners at
the customer level, building differentiated
embedded solutions and services, creating
a partner services economy, and developing
revenue and services opportunities for
our partners in the channel-led space. We
have designed the Embedded Solutions
and Services Programme to encourage
partners to build out standard offerings
around Riverbed technology, versus one-off
offerings. With pre-engineered technologies
or services, they can achieve lower costs
and higher margins.
In the Middle East, Riverbed has
adopted a two-tier channel model, whereby
resellers transact through value-added
distributors (VADs). Our strategy has been
to increase our focus and engagement
with resellers who drive value to the
48
A
s a WAN
optimisation
company, describe
the product profile,
market opportunities
and partner programme
for regional channels.
business. As a result, it is really about the
partnership driving value, not volume.
The same can be said for our VADs, and
we work very closely with those who bring
additional value to Riverbed. This helps
them become more relevant and further
increases their focus and outcome. At the
same time, we are open to inviting new
partners if they have a solid business plan
and are determined to reach the top tier of
our partner ecosystem. It is encouraging to
see that regional resellers have gradually
been moving towards solutions and
value-added selling. For this reason, we
position the solutions in our portfolio
to address key areas that partners can
focus on to accelerate their cloud and
digital strategies with end customers. Our
platform approach makes us the ideal go-
to-market partner in a dynamic industry.
It is not only about what we can do better
than others, but rather what we can do
that other vendors simply can’t.
In the Middle East, one of the key
solutions we have been focusing on
has been SteelCentral Aternity. Today,
businesses rely on enterprise applications
running on physical or virtual devices, or in
the cloud, which creates an IT monitoring
visibility gap. Attempting to solve this
with point products only results in a
fragmented view of what end users might
Equipping regional partners to promptly and effectively
address customer requirements is a core strategy
says Nirmal Manoharan, Regional Director of Sales,
ManageEngine.
Elie Dib, Senior Managing Director,
METNA at Riverbed.
be experiencing. The channel understands
this and is keen to deliver an end-to-
end visibility and monitoring solution.
SteelCentral Aternity fills this gap by
providing accurate, real-time information
about how end users actually experience
and interact with their applications,
devices and network.
We are also working with partners to
tackle the challenges of cloud networking.
With Riverbed SteelConnect SD-WAN,
we deliver an intelligent and simplified
approach to designing, deploying and
managing distributed networks for today’s
cloud-centric world. Partners need to
begin to invest in SD-WAN now or risk
falling behind, as our regional survey has
shown that 78 per cent of Middle East
organisations agree that SD-WAN will be a
critical part of their network infrastructure
within the next five years.
With regards to our partner programme,
it has always been based on five guiding
principles: consistency, predictability,
cross product and services, value-base
and simplicity. With the recent update,
we unveiled more partner incentives that
build on the existing programme benefits of
joint engagement, embedded solution and
services, and selling across the Riverbed
solution portfolio with accelerators to drive
growth for partners.
ssue 07
NTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS
A
s a real-time IT management company, describe
the product profile, market opportunities and
partner programme for regional channels.
Nirmal Manoharan, Regional Director of
Sales, ManageEngine.
M
anageEngine was established
in 2002 as the enterprise
IT management division
of the Zoho Corporation, providing
easy to use IT management software.
Our product suite includes affordable
solutions for network performance
management, an IT help desk,
application performance management,
desktop and mobile devices
management, log analysis and security,
privileged password management
and active directory management and
reporting. It is, by and large, an R&D-
focused company and the business
objective has been to break down the
complexity in IT management. We are
also trying to align IT with business by
building contextual integration within
products (both in-house and third-
party products) thereby bringing IT
together. The company has built its
portfolio of IT management products
from the ground up rather than via
merger and acquisition. The underlying
philosophy at ManageEngine has been
to build great products that can be
quickly deployed and evaluated. Most
of our fully functional products are
available as a free downloadable edition
with the file size as low as 30–40Mb for
evaluation for up to a month.
In the Middle East, we operate
jointly with our partner network and
have more than 12 elite partners (Silver
and Gold) and dozens of entry-level
partners in the region. Our strategy
has been to equip regional partners
– our ground soldiers – to promptly
and effectively address customer
requirements. Our partners have
ManageEngine-certified technicians who
can provide consultation, training and
implementation services. ManageEngine
User Conferences, seminars and training
events are great forums for customers
to exchange best practices. They are
also excellent opportunities for us
as a company to learn about the IT
challenges specific to a given region and
to improve our products in response.
Our products are backed by impeccable
customer support; and training offers
customers another avenue to master our
software and ultimately manage their
IT in the most secure, simple, fast and
efficient manner possible.
The ManageEngine User Conference
is a yearly signature event conducted
in the United States and Dubai to
facilitate knowledge sharing, IT best
practices and ManageEngine product
training. The conference is centred
on major IT management disciplines,
including IT operations management
(ITOM), IT service management
(ITSM), Windows and Active Directory
management and IT security. Beyond
formal sessions, networking with IT
colleagues from various industries has
become a highlight and trademark of
the conference.
49