Our partner program provides the resources and expertise required to deliver enhanced value to shared customers

Riverbed's partnership program focuses on giving a better service to
customers. Vivek Singh, Regional Director India/SAARC shares more about the
program and its benefits for the channel

Tell us about Riverbed Technology Alliance (RTA) Partners program.

Riverbed recognizes that our Steelhead appliances are one of the many
components in the IT infrastructure, and customers want to ensure that
complementary products-Applications, Storage and networking infrastructure- work
seamlessly across the WAN backbone. The Riverbed Technology Alliance (RTA),
launched in October 2006, was initiated to work with technology vendors in
various segments of IT-storage hardware, storage software, enterprise
applications, wireless and mobility, virtualiza­tion, network management,
security among others-to proactively work with these partners and develop
collateral and a support infrastructure to address these customer needs and
requirements.

What is the importance of this technology partner program?

Customers and partners are able to get a level of comfort in knowing that
applications critical to their business will benefit from our technology.

Riverbed Technology Alliance (RTA) provides a platform that gives the
resources and the expertise required to deliver enhanced value to shared
customers.

What are the benefits you extend to your partners and customers through
RTA program?

Riverbed's partners through the RTA have witnessed many benefits. For
example, there is 'Channel Mapping', where a partner can be featured on the WDS
forum, an open, on-line, WDS user community hosted by Riverbed. This forum
provides a credible source of information and discussion based on the real-life
experiences of participants as they confront the challenges and opportunities
created by a distributed and accelerated world. Moreover, Partners can also take
part in equipment loan/ sale program, where they can avail select equipment used
for testing, training and demo purposes.

What education and handholding do you provide to your partners?

We have a comprehensive partner portal that supplies all pertinent
educational materials, full day orientations, webcasts, newsletters, demos and
much more. Riverbed also organizes an awareness program for our channel partners
related to echo system partners under RTA and their associated complementary
technologies and solutions. In September, we had conducted a technical training
based around solutions with hands-on experience, for our Indian channel partners
in Mumbai.

LIPSHA Das

lipshad@cybermedia.co.in