It all started with the Opnet acquisition.
Just think if instead of buying Opnet, Riverbed had started to develop SD-WAN.....
6 replies (most recent on top)
While they overpaid for opnet, the opnet acquisition is NOT the problem. It opened doors and created major lift and stickiness with customers while steelhead was declining.
What k–led the company ? An ineffective steelhead upgrade strategy, a lack of a viable sd wan offering, a lack of a strategy to capitalize on the installed base by going to. Cloud, subscription etc while chasing the ebitda off of appliance sales while the rest of industry was moving to saas, falling apart of alliances, poor investment choices (xirrus, Sdp) lack of recognition that support sales would come under siege (this is the real Achilles heel that bit them) and of course absolute c-ap leadership in PM, AE, LS. DS.
We still had a chance to comeback if SteelConnect had worked out. But the guy in charge of it just couldn’t deliver. I remember he liked to brag about living in a certain affluent city on the peninsula and driving a Tesla. Maybe he just wasn’t hungry enough.
Current leadership is not responsible for buying Opnet or market forces out of their control. However they are clearly not able to lead a successful turnaround. All they can do is rehash Cisco management playbook and marketing from years ago. They are in way over their head.
Bravo StopHatingOPNET! While OpNet was largely dysfunctional in terms of business process, they brought a wealth of technology and expertise to the table. It was Riverbed management that failed to harness this value. They did have plenty of opportunities to fix the dysfunction, but, chose to look the other way.
Just think if Riverbed had made the products of the companies it bought better instead of worse. Just think if instead of focusing on selling more to customers it focused on providing more to customers.
Just think if Riverbed started to develop SDWAN at the time of the OPNET acquisition.... Those two things are unrelated.
Poor management decisions, poor integration, and poor forethought are the issues. Management had plenty of opportunities to turn things around and they did nothing but make it worse.