Seeing the future

Jerry M. Kennelly had a vision to make
data move at the speed of light, so he and
Steve McCanne left prominent positions
at Inktomi Corp. and founded Riverbed
Technology Inc.

Kennelly recognized that the challenges the chief information officers
would face in the future centered around
having a distributed work force and the
work becoming more digital. They realized everything was expected to be virtual, instant and global, so they set off to
solve the instant and global pieces.

Most companies said that to meet
these future demands, more expensive
networking equipment was required,
but Kennelly and his partner worked
to enable what the technology companies already had. They first introduced
their wide-area data services products
in 2004, and word of what they were
doing spread quickly. Other companies saw the opportunity and tried to
get on board through acquisitions and
market-stalling tactics. By the end of
2005, Cisco, Juniper and Citrix all had
competing offerings in the market.
Riverbed continued growing and eventually went public in 2006.

Throughout all of this, Kennelly
stood firm in his belief for the company, its products and its ability to be a
strong, independent company, and his
instincts were right on target. Today,
this chairman and CEO’s company is
the market leader and had more than
40 percent of the market share as well
as more than 3,500 customers.

HOW TO REACH: Riverbed Technology Inc., (415) 247-8800 or
www.riverbed.com