It’s been a busy year for WAN optimisation specialists Riverbed in ANZ, with the local team expanding significantly following the promotion of former ANZ regional director Steve Dixon to the role of senior director, APAC channels last March.

Former regional sales manager Ian Raper (pictured) was the man to take over the role, and in his year in charge he’s made four key hires: Brett Waddington, service provider alliances manager, Nathan Godsall, technical account manager of channels, Joe McPhillips, channel director, and Con Ioannou, technical account manager of service providers.

Now, the team is poised to take advantage of new changes to Riverbed’s partner program framework, including new enablement programs, enhanced profitability and reward programs, and enriched training schemes.

Raper says the investments in the ANZ channel team will benefit the company, its partners, and their customers.

"Appointing Joe, Brett, Nathan and Con means that we can offer a higher level of support to our channel partners and their customers,” Raper says.

"This is essential because our channel has continued to expand both across vertical industries such as government, mining, banking and finance, and in the IT performance solutions we offer such as WAN optimisation, edge virtual server infrastructure, application-aware network performance management, application delivery, web content optimisation and cloud data protection for backup, archive and disaster recovery.”

Go here for more on the Riverbed partner program.