Riverbed Technology Appoints Ex Cisco Executive as CIO

Application performance company Riverbed Technology (RVBD) has appointed Ginna Raahauge, former vice president of IT at Cisco (CSCO), as the company's new senior vice president and CIO.

In her new role, Raahauge will be responsible for Riverbed's IT strategy, applications, infrastructure, security and support, while also assisting the company with providing application performance products to customers.

"I look forward to helping Riverbed, now a billion dollar company, on its continued growth path," Raahauge told Talkin' Cloud via email. "I will pull from my experience and help the company move forward, continuing to offer the market place innovative products."

Raahauge also committed herself to assisting the company's channel partners: " I will assist the channel team to enhance the go-to-market approach to drive alignment and optimization across all partner segments."

While at Cisco, Raahauge directed the Customer Value Chain Management Information Technology organization, which included order/booking, demand planning, global supply chain, quality and revenue recognition. She was in charge of the entire technology platform for Cisco’s global order through invoice process and revenue recognition.

Prior to Cisco, Raahauge was vice president of IT and real estate for PalmSource, where she built the information technology platform, and managed infrastructure, data centers and all construction projects related to growth and acquisitions.

Riverbed chairman and CEO Jerry M. Kennelly said in his prepared remarks that Raahauge has experience in optimizing and transforming IT.

"She will be a key driver of new technologies and process at Riverbed, and we look forward to the many contributions Ginna will bring to our team," he said.

Riverbed extends Steelhead wide area network (WAN) optimization product family

Separately, Riverbed announced hardware appliance and upgrades to its Steelhead software, updating the Steelhead WAN optimization product family.

The two additions included an upgraded Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS) 8.5, the software that powers Riverbed Steelhead WAN optimization solutions; and a new hardware appliance, the Steelhead CX 255 series appliance.

In an interview with Talkin' Cloud last week, the company said these enhancements target small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) by enabling employees to access business applications and data from any location on any device.