Thread regarding Riverbed Technology Inc. layoffs

Cisco has no reason to buy legacy wanopt with minuscule ebitda. They are eyeing the next billion.

Aternity and AIX will end up being shelfware for most companies. Most customers really don’t posses the talent to make use of this data so preach all you want, it will end up in /dev/null. Good luck building valuation with this stuff, your focus really should be elsewhere.

We could use a good WANopt solution to complete our portfolio and go h2h with VC and SPK. Your solution is still better than ours but I’m gonna wait for the price to come down even further before buying it at your liquidation event. And thanks again for hiring away many of our former leaders who did not share my vision of how to adapt to a new era.

I always thought the problem was that they didn’t understand the differences between an SD-WAN product and a WAN Opt product. When SH breaks, it goes into bypass mode and the customer doesn’t even notice because the network still works. When an SD-WAN gateway breaks, nothing works - no emails, no voice, no video, nothing. The old Eng PM, VA, never seemed to figure it out and he got rid of a lot of QA, which is the worst thing he could have done. I truly think he is one of the people largely responsible for the demise of RVBD. The PMs and SEs were left with an inferior product and an outdated product to market and sell. I kind of felt sorry for DM taking over this mess.

Spot on - looking back it's unbelievable how inept management is. They fired hundreds of people only weeks after holding SKO, and only months after hiring dozens of people in sales roles - only to be promptly let go - and only a few months after a major sales restructuring to boot! How did the market change that dramatically in only 30 days? Oh, wait, it didn't. It was just AE and PM trying to artificially inflate their own egos while showing off a big party to their s-xy new friends at Versa. I get it that they were holding out hope that Broadcom was going to give them an influx of cash for Xirrus, but not only was that a pie-in-the-sky take on reality, but that money would likely have gone back into TB's coffers anyway. It's clear now that TB is forcing dramatic changes to try and recoup some of their sunk costs, but it seems they're realizing its a lost cause at this point. Fire sale prices for all the products and continued breakup of the company into smaller and smaller pieces is what I forecast.

I think the plan we had in 2016 was ok. If SCN had simply worked most of the time we would be in much better shape today.

I'm sure our history of roaring success with acquisitions will make buyers very comfortable going with the Riverbed/Versa partnership. They won't even notice the stench of death lingering over the company, because hey, we've been around awhile and had a good product once!

"how does an enterprise know it’s not a fly-by-night company? "

Easy: It's not headed by an unqualified ex-Cisco inside sales weenie who knows as little about running a company as he does about enterprise sales.

Oh, but he does know about expensive, ego-driven SKO videos in which he and his equally clueless minions play dress-up for their own enjoyment. What fun they've had!

Bad product managers and terrible product BU leaders is what k–led innovation at riverbed. Also, What can we expect from old sales leaders except pretending that their efforts requires PHD-level thinking and calculus and expecting praise when it’s more like community college intro to business 201 and high school algebra. The only strategic thinking these goofs did was figuring out to pipe more money into their bank accounts while doing the least amount of work. As for product folks, the bubbles that you live in is roughly 2-3 years behind CA so by the time you think something is a good idea, well, it’s a bit too late because the train already left the station. If you’re a PM and wondering why it seems like you’re copying other company's product features, well, this is your answer.

It’s almost mind boggling how bad the acquisition track record is

You need to understand that Versa is a startup and which means that it has all the baggage/risks that are associated with it. For example, even if Versa has good technology, how does an enterprise know it’s not a fly-by-night company? Riverbed has been around long enough to provide that assurance. Versa already has virtual SH running on their platform so your point about not having VSH running on the same platform is a non-issue.