Network and application performance vendor Riverbed, a Thoma Bravo portfolio company, has appointed Dan Smoot (pictured) as its new president and CEO to drive the company’s next phase of growth.
Smoot, who has 30 years of experience in the industry, holding several leadership roles at global providers like Salesforce, Cisco and VMware, will look to continue Riverbed’s momentum in delivering visibility and performance solutions for networks and applications, anywhere customers reside.
Having joined the company in 2018 as a chief customer officer, he has held several executive leadership roles, most recently as a COO, leading the organisation’s Worldwide Sales, Channels and Alliances, Sales Operations and Customer Experience teams.
He will be taking over the reins from Riverbed’s former CEO, Rich McBee, who helped lead the company “during a critical time, including setting a strong foundation for the future and navigating the Company through a global pandemic,” said Robert ‘Tre’ Sayle, Riverbed’s board member and Thoma Bravo partner.
“Smoot has an unwavering commitment to Riverbed’s customers and partners, an exceptional track record driving operational excellence and business results and is a strong leader of people and culture. He is the right leader to take Riverbed to the next level and drive profitable growth for our business, and continued innovation to support customers and partners,” he added.
Smoot, Riverbed’s new president and CEO, said he was honoured and excited to be joining the company.
“Riverbed is focused on fuelling our next phase of growth by delivering innovative and relevant technologies that help propel our customers’ businesses and enable them to fully capitalise on their digital and IT investments,” said Smoot.
“With leading end-to-end visibility and performance solutions, Riverbed is in a unique position to help business and government organisations as they modernise and secure their networks, accelerate cloud and SaaS migrations, and advance hybrid work environments as employees increasingly work-from-anywhere,” he added.
