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Dubai, United Arab Emirates - February 22, 2015 - Riverbed Technology, the leader in application performance infrastructure, has promoted Taj ElKhayat to the position of Regional Vice President for Middle East, Turkey, North, West, and Central Africa (METNA). In his new role, ElKhayat will be tasked with strengthening the company's position as a key technology provider for the hybrid enterprise, expanding its penetration into new industry verticals and growing its regional footprint in emerging markets. Elkhayat joined Riverbed as General Manager for the MENA region in January 2013 and was promoted to Managing Director for METNA in January 2014. During this period, he set in place Riverbed's go-to-market strategy for the region which entailed growing the company's customer base in the key markets of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt; engaging more deeply with a select group of 'focused' channel partners; and strengthening local ties with Riverbed Technology Alliance (RTA) partners such as EMC, VMware and Microsoft with the intention of creating joint opportunities. Commenting on Elkhayat's rapid rise through the organization, Kristian Thyregod, Senior Vice President, EMEA at Riverbed said, “Taj has done an outstanding job in the region, and since he joined the company, he has brought strong vision, leadership and passion to the team. I am delighted to promote Taj to this expanded role, where he will focus on selling solutions across the Riverbed portfolio, help his team drive even closer engagement with our customers, and widen and strengthen relationships across our channel ecosystem, to deliver even further growth in the region this year.” While traditionally, the key verticals for Riverbed in the METNA region have been oil & gas, banking and finance, and aviation, the company has seen increasing interest from the retail segment. Elkhayat also highlighted his intent to work closely with regional telecom providers. He believes that by leveraging Riverbed's technologies, they will be able to offer customers value-add services such as managed bandwidth. The company already works closely with telecom companies in mature IT markets and is keen to replicate this success in the region. “We have already firmly entrenched Riverbed in the GCC and Saudi Arabia and will now look to expand, together with our partners, into neighbouring markets. I look forward to creating synergy between the professional services, marketing, technical, sales and channel teams to help our customers unlock all the business benefits of the hybrid enterprise,” said Elkhayat. In the last 24 months, Riverbed has seen material growth in METNA. During the same period, the company has added key regional enterprise customers in key verticals such as Airlines, Public Sector and Education, and will continue to build on this success in the region.
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