Paul Mountford SVP and Chief Sales Officer, Riverbed

Riverbed Technology, Inc. announced that Paul Mountford has joined the company as SVP and chief sales officer, reporting to David Peranich, president, WW field operations.

 Mountford’s responsibilities will include day-to-day operations for all aspects of direct and indirect sales, as well as overseeing Riverbed’s channel ecosystem. This will enable and complement Peranich’s expanded focus on sales strategy and direction.

“Paul is a proven leader and industry veteran who will help us scale, and play a key role in executing on our growth strategy as we continue our evolution to a multi-product solutions and platform provider,” said Jerry M. Kennelly, Riverbed chairman and CEO. “As organizations around the world evolve to a hybrid IT environment with resources on premises and in public clouds and a mix of private and public networks, Riverbed is uniquely positioned to address location and distance challenges through our application performance platform, and Paul’s experience across geographies and multi-product technology sales will be a major asset for us.”

Mountford brings to Riverbed 30 years of leadership experience in the technology sector, including data center and virtualization, network and application infrastructure, collaboration and mobile devices. He spent 16 years at Cisco, with roles that included running Cisco’s $34 billion enterprise business, the first Cisco executive to lead the company’s emerging markets business, and rebuilding and running channel partner program. He was most recently CEO of Sentillian, a New York-based web intelligence start-up focused on monitoring publicly shared content. Prior to joining Cisco, Mountford owned a channel development consultancy where he helped US-based companies develop successful channel strategies for successfully entering international markets. Mountford had several key sales positions at Azlan, Retix, Arix Systems and Norsk Data.

“Paul is a dynamic business leader who takes a hands-on approach and has a track record of executing and driving measurable results,” said Peranich. “Paul is also a proven leader of highly successful sales teams, and brings bench strength in selling a platform, scaling a channel and capitalizing on both established and emerging markets.”

“With over 25,000 customers, Riverbed has a significant opportunity to help hybrid enterprises overcome the inherent technical complexities in delivering applications and data to anyone from anywhere so that business can perform at its peak,” said Mountford. “Riverbed has industry-leading technology, strong partnerships and a committed channel, which puts us in a strong position in the $11 billion market for application performance infrastructure. I look forward to capitalizing fully on this opportunity.”