Riverbed Technology is a San Francisco-based IT software company that helps large enterprises see, optimize, and troubleshoot the digital experiences their people and customers depend on. Originally famous for the SteelHead WAN-optimization appliance, Riverbed has reinvented itself around AI-powered unified observability - stitching together network, application, and end-user telemetry, then layering predictive, generative, and agentic AI on top to spot problems and increasingly fix them automatically. Founded in 2002, taken private by Thoma Bravo in 2015 and again by Vector Capital in 2023, it serves thousands of global organizations across finance, government, healthcare, retail, and beyond.
Jerry M. Kennelly co-founded Riverbed Technology in 2002 and spent 16 years building it from a two-person startup into a billion-dollar enterprise serving 30,000 customers across every Forbes Global 100 company. A finance executive turned visionary operator, Kennelly combined rigorous business discipline with Silicon Valley boldness - taking Riverbed public on NASDAQ in 2006, engineering nine acquisitions, and watching its market cap peak near $6 billion in 2011. After retiring from Riverbed in April 2018, he became Chairman and CEO of Scandic Capital LLC and joined the board of cybersecurity firm Tenable.