Gitex 2020: Riverbed advocates greater visibility post-Covid

What products and solutions will Riverbed be showcasing at Gitex Technology Week?
Migally: At Gitex, we will be showcasing the latest release of our unified Network Performance Management (NPM) solution which delivers new cloud deployment options, increased visibility into encrypted traffic flows, and new AI/ML-based behavioural analytics. The greater level of visibility that this solution makes possible is crucial to monitoring productivity and performance, as organisations continue to shift toward hybrid-networks and work-from-anywhere models.

A second solution showcase will be our Client Accelerator. This solution is ideal for organisations looking to accelerate business-critical applications and performance of remote employees as increasingly more employees work from anywhere. This software solution extends optimisation and acceleration technology all the way down to the end user – laptops or desktops – eliminating performance problems caused by network congestion, latency, and increasingly unpredictable last-mile networks, providing accelerated access to on-prem, IaaS, or SaaS-based applications, even in less than ideal user conditions and regardless of location.

What are your expectations for the show this year?
Migally: This will undoubtably be a unique edition of Gitex and we expect the footfall, as well as the ability to interact and engage to be radically different than in previous years. That said, Riverbed has decided to be present at Gitex – at the stand of our regional distributor, Starlink – as a demonstration of our continued commitment to the region, and our customers and partners. Given the recent launch of our updated NPM portfolio, we believe Gitex will also stand as a viable platform for us to highlight this powerful solution to the market.

What is the focus of Riverbed’s participation at Gitex 2020?
Migally: Our participation will centre around the greater need for visibility in 2021 and beyond. With the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses need more visibility into hybrid and distributed workforces as users are increasingly connecting beyond corporate networks and facilities and working from anywhere. In Riverbed’s Future of Work Survey, 37 per cent of business leaders surveyed said they needed better visibility into network and application performance to ensure a better remote work environment, as increased visibility provides greater insight into business productivity and performance. Even after Covid-19 passes, remote working and distributed workforces are expected to see a sharp increase from the past—growing to 600 million remote employees by 2024, up from 343 million in 2019.

What has been the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on your customers?
Migally: Currently, our focus has been on enabling our customers to optimise their networks and efficiently manage the surge in the number of work-from-home employees while ensuring they are equipped to be productive. A large part of this centres around ensuring the performance and security of digital services, even as employees move from local network access to remote network access models. We have seen a tremendously positive market response and as an example, strong market momentum has resulted in nearly 100% sequential growth for our Client Accelerator.

In the long term, it is unlikely that the way people work will return to normal – in fact, Gartner has predicted that by 2030, the demand for remote work will increase by 30 per cent due to Gen S fully entering the workforce. As organisations adjust to this ‘new norm’, Riverbed will work to empower our partners and our customers to refocus on the future. We will do so by helping them maximise network and application performance to support all workers – anywhere, anytime, and via any delivery method. At the same time, we aim to help them reduce risk by increasing visibility into their hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Research conducted by Riverbed earlier this year indicates that business leaders in the UAE and Saudi Arabia expect that on average, 28 per cent of their teams will work remotely after the pandemic. With Solution-as-a-Service offerings being a key enabler of the remote workforce, Riverbed has become even more relevant in the current environment. As a result, our regional strategy is to grow the base of customers who utilise our acceleration solutions – Riverbed SaaS Accelerator and Client Accelerator – and our end-to-end visibility solution, Riverbed Network Performance Management.