71 out of the 100 largest corporations in the world are Riverbed customers

WAN optimization is no longer a niche technology; it has entered the mainstream.  Nothing illustrates this more clearly than Riverbed CEO Jerry Kenelly's recent July 22 announcement that 71 of the Forbes Global 100 are now Riverbed customers.  Riverbed's remarkable presence within the IT infrastructures of the world's largest corporations facilitates some additional interesting observations about Riverbed and its market leadership in WAN optimization:

1)  Riverbed is the most scalable WAN optimization solution -- Obviously, the largest corporations also have the greatest scalability requirements, and Riverbed's success in these environments demonstrate how Steelhead solution is the most scalable WAN optimization product available.  Only facts, no bluster here--nothing proves a product offering's scalability as much as a full-scale deployment in the IT environment of a Forbes Global 100 company.

2)  Riverbed delivers a very strong return-on-investment (ROI) -- Would the majority of the largest enterprises in the world be deploying Riverbed if there were not a strong ROI?  The rapid adoption of Riverbed is easy to understand in light of an IDC study showing an average pay-back period of 6.9 months, and an overall ROI of 457% over a 3-year period.  With such a strong ROI, it is no wonder that the largest enterprises are rushing to deploy Riverbed, even during one of the most difficult economic periods in recent history.

3)  Riverbed is the lowest risk option -- One of the worst nightmares for an IT director is to invest in a product that sucks up the time and resources of your staff, causes network disruptions, exhibits an inordinate number of bugs, and generally doesn't work as expected.  Fortunately, the Riverbed offering has been vetted and tested in the largest, most demanding networks in the world.  If the Riverbed solution works for the most difficult network environments imaginable, then it will almost certainly work for your own environment. 

4)  Riverbed offers strong worldwide support capabilities for global corporations -- Riverbed has over 100 dedicated support engineers located in at least eight locations around the world (Amsterdam, London, new York, San Francisco, Singapore, Sunnyvale, Sydney, and Tokyo) who provide 24 x 7 global coverage for Riverbed's customers.  Riverbed's support engineers are focused on one thing only--supporting Riverbed WAN optimization and network management products.

5)  If you haven't deployed Riverbed, you may be missing out -- Achieving the competitiveness necessary to weather difficult economic conditions requires that businesses have cost-effective IT infrastructure that maximizes the employee productivity.  If you haven't deployed Riverbed, it's likely that your competitors have, or are in the process of a Riverbed deployment.  For those who have deployed Riverbed, the additional 15.3 hours of annual productivity per employee (according to IDC's study) contributes to competitiveness needed to not only survive, but thrive in difficult economic conditions.

Comments

[Surfer Guy]

Out of curiosity, the original posted quoted this

"We exited the quarter with more than 8,300 cumulative customers. New customer additions exceeded 500, and we now count 71 of the Forbes Global 100 as Riverbed customers with the vast majority of these customers still in the very early stages of their potential deployments."
http://seekingalpha.com/article/216110-riverbed-technology-q2-2010-earnings-call-transcript

If a customer is still in early stages of "potential deployment" that means that they may not actually deploy, thus the term "potential" so i'm wondering how does this equal 71 out of the Forbes Global 100?

I'm curious if you could name 30 customers on the list?

[Josh Tseng]

"71 out of the Forbes Global 100" is an audited statement. Whether a given customer has 6 or 600 Steelheads, they still count as a Riverbed customer. The identities of these customers is confidential.

Josh

[Anonymous]

Umm.. Sounds like you could randomly pick 1 of the 100 and have a 71% chance of getting it right, Surfer Guy.

[Josh Tseng]

Yep, that's exactly right Surfer Guy. Pick any of the Forbes 100 and more likely than not they have purchased and deployed Riverbed Steelheads.

Josh

[Surfer Guy]

I'm curious as Cisco also claimed to have a high number of the Fortune 100 customers as well.

Still wondering about the "Potential Deployments" part of
http://seekingalpha.com/article/216110-riverbed-technology-q2-2010-earnings-call-transcript

So you may count a customer that purchased 2 boxes as a customer even if they haven't deployed anything. Really wish I studied marketing in school as I could whip up stories around nothing too.

[Josh Tseng]

Surfer guy,

How did you know that 71 Fortune 100 companies decided to buy two Riverbed boxes each and not deploy them? I'm amazed by your ability to invent reality by pointing out what wasn't said.

The fact is that many of Cisco's former WAAS customers are now Riverbed customers. Cisco should check their referenceable WAAS customer list, because there have been times when they've referenced Riverbed customers as WAAS customers. It's quite embarrasing to them when that happens.

As far as what Jerry meant by "potential deployments", many Riverbed customers start with an initial order of a dozen boxes or so, but the "potential deployment" is much larger, into the thousands of boxes.

Best regards,
Josh

[Surfer Guy]

I merely asked if a potential customer had bought 2 boxes of a product, would Riverbed count them as one of the 71/100 customers. I didn't say that I knew these, please excuse my lack of punctuation as it might have been more clear it was a question if I punctuated correctly.

In your example of "an initial order of a dozen boxes", wouldn't they have already deployed those before purchasing the "thousands of boxes" that you mention. What happens when a router vendor decides to put this code into their routers (Juniper, Cisco, Huawei, HP/3Com)?

[Josh Tseng]

Surfer Guy, thanks for your clarification.

As I said, many large customers tell us they have a requirement to purchase thousands of Riverbed boxes, but they prefer not to purchase them all at once. So they start with an initial order of a dozen or so.

And when they receive their Steelheads, they don't just put them into storage--they deploy them immediately. In a larger network with only a few Riverbed boxes, employees that don't have them tend to get jealous of those who do, so the company usually has no choice but to purchase more.

Josh

[Surfer Guy]

Ok, so those would be real deployments, regardless of size (either a few or thousands as you wrote) and not a "potential deployment" as in the case of 71% of Forbes 100.

Thank you for clarification that it was marketing speak.

[Anonymous]

It says "potential deployments", not "potential deployment". Potential meaning possible size.

[Surfer Guy]

should it then say "potential size of the deployment" and not "potential deployments". Surely the CEO wouldn't be using marketing speak to over market one's place within the market.

I wonder what happens when bandwidth becomes even more plentiful and the protocol optimization is just part of the branch router....

[Josh Tseng]

Thanks for the comments guys. I hope you had a chance to see Jerry's recent interview on Network World:

http://www.cio.com/article/603459/Riverbed_CEO_Cisco_Doesn_t_Own_The_Cloud?page=1&taxonomyId=3024

It will be interesting to see where WAN optimization goes from here. My question is, is it easier to put the router into the WAN optimization device, or the WAN optimization device into the router? This is the way that Jerry put it:

"Cisco has this ISR box where they have a slot for a WAN optimization board. The only thing that's integrated in that scheme is the power and the chassis. There's no other integration. It's a completely separate computer that just happens to share the power supply and be wrapped in the same piece of sheet metal. If you made it big enough you could park a Toyota in there and have it be a router, a WAN optimizer and a Toyota garage."

Do you see the above as the future for WAN optimization? What do you think?

[marko]

Funny to hear a guy who is having issues w/ Riverbed marketing when he is specifically falling for Cisco marketing and future may bring (an inferior solution on a router). Something that does not work well as an appliance - having it on a router does not auto-magically make it work better -:)