Riverbed Channel Promotes Salesforce, EMC Alums to Key Roles

Riverbed, the network performance management provider, is promoting a pair of key players in its channel organization.

Riverbed’s Eric Tinker

The first is Eric Tinker, Riverbed’s new senior vice president of commercial sales. He is responsible for leading global strategy for the Riverbed channel program and supporting all partners. Furthermore, the company is asking Tinker to help meet growing demand for its network visibility and performance applications. To accomplish that, he will enlist the help of “next-generation partners” and offer them enablement tools to make them successful.

In addition, Tinker leads Riverbed’s Global Renewals Team, which supports large global enterprise and government customers. That’s a key market for Riverbed because these organizations are investing heavily in the company’s network solutions.

Coming up on five years at Riverbed, Tinker had been interim leader for Riverbed’s global channel program after Bridget Bisnette’s retirement earlier this year. Before Riverbed, he spent three-and-a-half years at Salesforce and 16 years at PTC.

Riverbed’s Meg Brennan

Meantime, Meg Brennan steps into the role of vice president, global channels. Her previous title was senior director. No major change in job description comes with the new title; Brennan will continue to lead global channel programs at Riverbed. Her main job is to create programs and partner experiences that make both the company and its partners successful. Her team’s responsibilities cover partner program management, enablement, channel operations and partner support.

Brennan has more than 25 years of industry experience. She is an EMC vet who has worked closely with Sun Microsystems, Arrow, Tech Data and more.

Words from the COO

Dan Smoot is chief operating officer at Riverbed — and Tinker’s boss. Brennan will report to Tinker.

“I am thrilled to congratulate Eric Tinker and Meg Brennan on their promotions and hard work,” said Smoot. “I also congratulate the entire Riverbed channel team and our dedicated partner community as we expand the team and continue to support demand for Riverbed solutions that have been so critical to organizations in successfully supporting work-from-anywhere environments, maintaining a strong security posture, and in maximizing visibility and of networks and applications.”

Smoot said Riverbed looks forward to furthering the partnership with its channel community “this year and beyond.”

Riverbed launched its “Rise” channel program in 2018, with the goal of delivering “market-leading” solutions to solve critical business problems.