Playing niche is not only difficult but always a path ridden with numerous daunty
obstacles. More so, if you are trying to do that at the ripe age of 50
or so. But, Jerry M. Kennelly, the founder, chairman, and CEO of
Riverbed Technology – the leading application performance infrastructure
services company – has overcome each and every one of those impediments
and come up trumps done with flying colours. His vision, conviction
in it, and the ability to take a team of driven individuals forward, in
creating value for both the company’s customers as well it itself, is
quite a saga in itself.
In fact, it is his leadership more than
anything else that has lead to the fantastic growth of Riverbed in just a
matter of 10years or so. In employee reviews, Kennelly was recognized
for creating a great culture, inspiring employees, his vision/direction
for Riverbed’s future, friendly demeanour and openness – manifest in the
words of a Riverbed employee (wrote in a review) - “Great history and
success. Jerry is a fantastic CEO with tons of enthusiasm and energy.
Very personable and cares greatly about his company and people.”
Education
A
C.P.A., Kennelly holds a Masters degree in Accounting from the New York
University (Leonard N. Stern School of Business) besides the B.A.
degree in Political Economy from Williams College.
Before Riverbed
Jerry
Kennelly worked for Tandem Computers (a computer company now part of
Hewlett-Packard Development Company) from 1980 to 1988, serving as its
Worldwide Sales and Marketing Controller. But then the finance guy had
to make good of his chosen field, so for about the next two years (from
1988 to 1990), he served as a Finance Director (for United States
Operations) at Oracle Corporation.
Following his stint at Oracle
Corp., he held a number of senior financial and operational positions,
including Vice President of Corporate Finance, at Sybase, Inc. for the
next 6 years (from 1990 -1996).
Kennelly went on to rise in the
ranks with each job assignment he took up: be it Oracle Corp., Sybase,
Inc., or even Inktomi, where he joined in 1996 as its Chief Financial
Officer and Vice President of Finance. He continued to work-up
the ladder at Inktomi in the years that followed – he was elevated to
the post of Senior Vice President of Inktomi Corporation in December
1999.
That was his introduction to a truly leadership role which
was soon followed by him assuming the Executive Vice President and
Secretary of Inktomi Corporation leading upto the inception of Riverbed.
His
experience at major software infrastructure companies, HP, Oracle, and
Sybase had brought along deep business insights. There were underlying
problems that impeded business performance. The entrepreneur in Kennelly
saw a great business avenue presented by the small window of
opportunity called application performance. In fact, he was to prove how
significant this area of enterprise IT is once he brought along a team
of like-minded individuals to found Riverbed Technology – in May of
2002.
The Riverbed Saga
Riverbed was
founded in 2002 to eliminate distance and location as constraints in
delivering applications by solving the problems of latency and bandwidth
limitations in wide area networks. It has done more than that.
Today,
more than 26,000 of the world’s best brands rely on Riverbed to ensure
superior application and business performance through a host of products
such as SteelScript, SteelCentral for Network Performance Management,
SteelCentral for Performance Management and Control, SteelCentral for
Application Performance Management, SteelHead for WAN Optimization,
SteelCentral for Central Management and Control, and SteelFusion.
Acquisitions
In just over a decade, Kennelly has inspired as well as overseen the phenomenal growth of Riverbed, from a start-up
to the market leader ($1 billion annual revenue) in application
performance infrastructure, with 73 offices across 37 countries. Apart
from standing on its own (and standing tall at that! – voted amongst the
20 best places to work in the world), the company made some very smart
acquisitions right from its take-over of Mazu Networks, Inc. in February
2009. CACE Technologies Inc. (Oct 2010), Global Protocals LLC (Nov
2010), Aptimize
Ltd. (Jul 2011), Zeus Technology Ltd. (Jul 2011), Expand Networks (Jan
2012), OPNET Technologies, Inc. (Dec 2012), & Infineta Systems (Mar
2013).
Thwarting the take-over bid
While it
had successfully acquired a handful of companies and made good out
them, Riverbed recently rejected a $3 billion acquisition bid by Elliot
Management (one of its investors) – citing the offer under-values the company worth. There could have been many reasons for the apparent snub
but Kennelly definitely would have had his reasons, otherwise he would
not lose an opportunity for unlocking the immense value he has created,
for everyone concerned with Riverbed. Although there is immense pressure
from some quarters to just lap it up, Kennelly wasn’t willing to give
in easily.
Whether or not Kennelly yield to the market pressures
when the company was bought by Thoma Bravo (and Teacher’s Private
Capital - the investment arm of Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.) for a
reported $3.5 billion, in December 2014. We can safely say that Kennelly
would have at least made sure that Riverbed has gone into safe hands,
and will continue to work and progress in the manner and spirit with
which he had envisaged it, and brought to the position it is today.
Other affiliations
|
| Kennelly has been a Director of OPNET Technologies, Inc. since December 18, 2012 |
| 'Director of Nimble Storage, Inc. since March 2013 |
| 'He serves as a Director of Wirama, Inc |
| 'Served as a Director of Philips Healthcare Informatics, Inc |
| 'Serves as a member of the Industry Advisory Committee at Pelion Venture Partners |
Awards & Recognition
|
| 'The company has not only won admirers and customers with its innovative and business performance improvement tools and services,
but has also won many, many awards and gained much recognition. All of
which wasn’t possible without the pivot called Jerry M. Kennelly |
| Under Kennelly’s leadership, Riverbed has been |
| 'Recognized as one of top 20 Best Places to Work in the Glassdoor Employee’s Choice Awards 2014 |
| 'Ranked in the top 10 best places to work in the technology industry second year in a row with the Glassdoor Employee’s Choice Awards |
| 'Riverbed recognized as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics (NPMD) – 2015 |
| 'Gartner Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimization, 2014 |
| 'Best WAN Optimization Vendor of the year, 2014 |
| 'Best Growth Initiative by a Vendor, 2014 |
| 'Top 100 Workplaces in the Bay Area, 2014 |
| 'Best Network Management Vendor, 2014 (Network Middle East Innovation Awards) |
Quotes |
| This
flexibility, alongside Thoma Bravo's deep experience growing companies
in the application performance space, makes us very excited about the
future.""- Referring to Riverbed’s acquisition |
| For
more than 10 years, Riverbed has been helping our 25,000 customers
drive business performance by optimizing the delivery and management of
the applications and data their organizations depend on, regardless of
where those applications reside. |
| I’m
proud of our success as a company, market leadership,
market-redefining, innovations – but most of all I’m proud of how we
achieved all that, through a culture of transparency, trust, creativity and collaboration.. |
| I’m
humbled by the Glassdoor CEO rankings, but it’s the Riverbed culture, I
believe that employees are responding to in their comments, as well as
with their daily enthusiasm and drive. |
| With
this acquisition now complete, our team can begin to move forward with
the strategic initiatives that will take us to the next stage of
growth.” – About Riverbed’s acquisition by Thoma Bravo |
| As a private company, Riverbed is better positioned to pursue our long termgoals, and has greater flexibility to develop best-of breed technologies that deliver superior application performance for our customers." – About Riverbed’s acquisition by Thoma Bravo |
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