Riverbed expands APJ leadership with Peter Lee promotion

Riverbed has appointed Peter Lee as Regional Director of Solutions Engineering for Asia Pacific and Japan and promoted Nick Kempt to Director of Alliances, AIOps and Customer Success for the region, expanding its APJ leadership team.

Lee joins Riverbed with more than 20 years of experience in technical pre-sales, cyber security and IT observability. He will lead the build-out of the company's solutions engineering organisation across APJ and report to Charbel Khneisser, Senior Vice President, Global Solutions Engineering.

Kempt takes on a broader regional brief after more than five years with Riverbed in APJ. His remit includes AIOps strategy, executive customer relationships, and alliances with managed service providers and technology partners. He reports to Paul Crighton, Vice President of Sales, APJ.

The appointments come as Riverbed pushes further into unified observability, AIOps and autonomous IT operations in the region. Customers are seeking more support as they adopt artificial intelligence and work to simplify IT operations.

According to Riverbed, Lee has worked across enterprise, strategic and public sector segments in APJ. His background includes leading and mentoring solutions engineering and architecture teams, as well as contributing to regional go-to-market planning with sales, marketing and product groups.

His appointment adds technical leadership at a time when vendors in the observability and IT operations market are seeking to tie monitoring, analytics and automation more closely together. In APJ, that has also increased the importance of local engineering teams that can work with customers and partners across varied markets.

"Organisations across APJ want to simplify complex technology environments and move beyond fragmented monitoring tools," said Lee, Regional Director of Solutions Engineering, Riverbed.

"Riverbed's combination of network intelligence, observability and AI-driven insights, extending to mobile devices, gives organisations the context to identify issues faster and improve digital experiences. I'm excited to help build a solutions engineering team that demonstrates that value to customers and partners," he said.

Kempt's promotion brings customer engagement and partner management together with responsibility for regional AIOps strategy. He will focus on strengthening executive-level customer relationships and expanding ties with managed service providers and technology partners across APJ.

That reflects a broader shift in the enterprise technology market, where suppliers are using channel and service provider relationships to widen adoption of AI and automation tools. It also points to the commercial challenge of turning technical observability data into business cases that resonate with senior customers.

"As organisations invest more in AI and automation, the focus is shifting to how those investments deliver business value," said Kempt, Director of Alliances, AIOps and Customer Success, Riverbed.

"My priority is to deepen customer relationships and work with our partners to turn observability, AI and automation into measurable outcomes," he said.

Product push

The leadership changes follow a recent run of product launches from Riverbed. Earlier this year, the company introduced six new products and updates aimed at autonomous IT operations, including Riverbed IQ 4.0, Riverbed Q, AI Assurance, and additions to its Aternity line such as Replay 2.0, High Frequency Analytics and APM+.

These products are intended to extend visibility across IT environments, improve root cause analysis and help organisations prevent disruption before it affects users. The releases are part of the company's wider Zero Disruption strategy, which centres on using observability and AI to identify and resolve issues more quickly.

For Riverbed, the APJ appointments suggest regional execution is central to that strategy. The market spans mature economies with established enterprise technology estates as well as fast-growing digital markets, making technical support, partner reach and customer management important to any expansion effort.

Crighton linked the appointments to changing customer expectations around AI and partner support. "AI is changing what customers expect from their technology environments and their partners," said Crighton, Vice President of Sales, APJ, Riverbed.

"Peter and Nick bring complementary strengths in technical leadership, customer success and regional execution. Their expanded roles will help customers and partners get more from their existing investments as they move toward autonomous IT operations, maximising the value of AI in their IT environments," he said.