What are your predictions? How is this thing untangle and where will we be in six months. Please keep it polite.
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Riverbed SteelFusion is over priced and poorly engineered. I regret the day we implemented it as Granite. Newer versions have slightly improved, but never rectified the fact that this is not an enterprise ready product. Virtual Core implementation is horrible for FC, even worse under HA and immensely complex. Never ending problems including failed backups, failed recoveries. Worst is disappearing LUNs which plague the product. LUNs that can not be recovered to the remote branches. Still using slow SATA drives! - We are looking at EMC CloudArray or just RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines. Our typical branch server is about $3-4k with 3 year warranty. Fusion is $20k with 1 year support plus all the stuff we need to buy at the DataCenter makes it about $30k per site.
Riverbed may be thinking of changing its business and become an MS software development sweatshop. Just saw this on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/48902424?trk=job_view_similar_jobs&trk=job_view_similar_jobs
About this Position:
The SharePoint will have extensive experience with Software Development Practices including Source Control, Configuration Management, Unit Testing and Object Oriented Design patterns.
Wow if you still love those guys after they got bought out for $1B... how many Opnet-ers got rich from the deal? two, 3 or 4, that's sooo sad! The new America with all of these great "job creators". Maybe rvbd n opnt management were really on the same team. F#$k writing code for these chumps, play guitar!
They sold it because someone offered them One... Billion... Dollars!
Q: Why did they/he/the-buyers do that?
A: So they could say they were one of the only 10 companies to reach 1 Billion $$ in revenue in their first 10 years of operation.
Any more questions, from you middle managers, who should have been laid off, but live to see another dysfunctional day?
Ha ha. They're too busy counting their money and working on their next startup to waste their time and come on here and play with the Riverbed mid-mgmt trolls who refuse to accept the reality that it was their own bosses (and their own ineptitude) that screwed up the company, and in the process screwed a lot of long time great employees (from all the different companies) who made them their fortunes.
Only ones who have a right to be upset with the brothers are the long time OPNET employees who had a good thing going with a good company (that was growing and doing just fine on it's own), but got dragged down when JK, DP, et al. ruined a good thing with their incompetence...
It's interesting to see MC and his incestuous brother AC come on here and bad mouth RVBD. What really happened was MC and AC did not get their way after the merger and got their sorry a$$ booted. Now they are still trying to place the blame on RVBD by posing as various anonymous posters. Nice try! Why don't you just be happy with the millions you raped out of the fine employees you abused over the years? Just so much ego and pride that you can't let it go and still need to come here to bash away.
As an ex-Riverbed employee who left because he saw the signs, I have to agree with responsetoftard. JK and his ego-driven policy implementation and culture of promoting old-boys network destroyed Riverbed. Some people who were mediocre at best were promoted because they went for a beer with their similarly mediocre and egocentric bosses - just look at some managers in EMEA and you get the message. These guys fed only their own interest with least priority for Riverbed's interest. as someone who was focussed on core WAN optimization and Granite/Steelfusion, every time I asked for a training on Opnet suite of products, a mouth-breather who was made my manager sent emails that literally read "too complicated...not possible". Because some products are too complicated to a man-who-is-legend-in-his-own-mind, it is supposedly complicated to everyone. This is a culture that was promoted and enforced last couple of year's of dying perod of Riverbed - you do what you are told. Its a pity because this company was not like this when I had joined it - individuality was celebrated then. They started to lose it after their founder member CTO left. JK killed it, DP did the dance wth him, now DP's a$$ is also fried.
Opnet sold > $225 million in products and services the last year they operated independent from riverbed, the stock payed a 2% dividend, employees were given annual raises and had a good espp and higher 401k match than now with rvbd. Products were being improved every 3 to 6 months, they were Gartner apm leaders, had customers who loved their products, support, training materials and annual technology conference.
Under Jk in 2.5 years there has been fewer product improvements that there were in the last 6 months under the c brothers, some training materials haven't been updated in 2.5 years, EVERY customer I've spoken to who attended opnetwork and force said force was a waste of their time and money with zero deep technical training, no deep insights from and access to the product development teams etc...
I could go on with more facts of how poorly run rvbd is and the ineptness of it senior management team, but you seem very knowledgeable on how opnet destroyed rvbd.
Parting question when was the last time you heard Jk give any details on how we were going to provide more value to rvbd customers? Sadly I'd have say never. The founders of opnet did this every day, it's what made that company so successful, and it's probably a key to what did riverbed in .
Bzzzt........ wrong!!!! OPNET was a loser and going down fast. Revenues were in decline that's why the Cohens sold it!!!! If it was so great why would they have sold it then?? Riverbed stupidly saved it and in the process got screwed up itself. Don't understand the revisionist OPNET views around here. That company sucked and dragged down Riverbed with it.
Opnet was a big money maker until Riverbed got a hold on it. Now Thoma Bravo will do to Riverbed what Rivebed did to Opnet.
In the gutter. Jerry, now that he is divorced from Dave Peranich and lost the architect of his millions Steve McCanne, buying yet a couple more Lamborghinis for his collection, while whiners, leftover losers and scavengers at Riverbed, who has nowhere else to go because they are and always have been sh!t and unprofessional, biting each other off trying to get whatever last bit they can from the dying carcass of a medium sized animal. After the last bit of meat is gone, TB will chuck Riverbed to the dump and the grabbastic pieces of amphibian sh!t mid-managers , especially in EMEA, will realise what they got they got because they kissed a$$, not because they are remotely any good.
Who Cares.
http://the-oracle-answers.com/
If I am the decision maker at TB, It makes sense to me that
A) Steelhead + Cascade -> Cisco/Juniper/F5 or any other network equipment makers;
B) SteelFussion -> EMC/NetApp or other storage vendors;
C) OPNET, the one drags us all down, to be merged with Dynatrace;
D), SteelApp -> sold already to the right people (well, I know our people sold to that camp are now being squeezed, just like how we squeezed OPNET people).
And before the above are all kicked off, we should just get rid of more bad woods so our books looked rosier. TB should not let non-productive people staying.
For people who no longer in love with the company, or what it has done to you or treated you, leave now. For people who want to continue and do not see immediate threat to your position, try spot weakness in other departments and make suggestion to your manager(s) so the future axes would hopefully fall on others.
It may take up to a year, but at that point "performance metrics" will be taken. If the business entity isn't where they want/project/think it should be... Rest assured, it will be time for the wrecking ball. Jerry is just sticking around until his (final) payday. PJ and AD undoubtedly have standing offers from the C brothers. It will be a shame, really. Everyone that's left without a parachute will go down with the plane. Quite frankly, it will have been a long time coming.
My forecast, FWIW.
xPM will be sold to Dynatrace.
SteelHead/SteelFusion bundled deal to EMC or NetApp
We will be merged with another company Thoma Bravo owns, I do not doubt this. Most of management will be gone, staff will be decimated but some will be kept. That's my prediction. It'll take them more than 6 months for this though.
Keep the question urself.
You answed your own quetion.
Will Thoma Bravo keep two companies separate that have competing product lines? Doubtful. Split and merge seems likely. Big question is where does RB Core go. Standalone, sold off, merged with other HW company they own? Only the Shadow knows.