Problem #1. Riverbed mgmt didn't have a clue what they were getting when they purchased OPNET.
Problem #2. Riverbed mgmt decided their smaller performance mgmt teams they bought earlier should run the bigger, more successful performance mgmt teams they just acquired.
Problem #3. Riverbed mgmt didn't bother to teach most of their core HW sales teams what they also could sell in the APM space, so they just kept going with the same old NPM, NPM, NPM after they were done selling their Steelheads.
Problem #4. Riverbed mgmt didn't bother to deal with the fact they had some overlapping capabilities in their performance mgmt space, and just didn't bother tightly integrating everything until late in the game, and forced their field teams to guess as what they should be offering, confusing those teams, and their customers.
Problem #5. Riverbed mgmt thinks slick marketing can overcome problem #'s 1-4.
Problem #6. Riverbed mgmt thinks there will always be a good market for Steelheads no matter what, so however else they screw up the rest of the company, they can always fall back on that
Problem #7. Riverbed mgmt makes staffing decisions based on immediate bottom line $, not based on what impact it's going to have on their performance product lines, and the ability to sell and support them short and long term.