John Milionis (Riverbed)
Riverbed has promoted Australia and New Zealand channel chief John Milionis to oversee the entire Asia Pacific and Japan region.
In his new role of head of channels in APJ, Milionis will report to Richard Steranka, global VP of sales, and be responsible for enabling channel growth across the region.
Speaking to ARN, Milionis said one of the main drivers underpinning Riverbed this year would be in the application space, across software-as-a-service and cloud.
“We've got some great new technologies, particularly on the application side, you know, accelerating applications in the SaaS and cloud [Microsoft] 365, Salesforce and ServiceNow,” he explained. “So we're really about in the first instance, identifying incremental, new business departments.”
In particular, the network and application performance vendor is hoping to drive more programs and integrations around Microsoft and, as a result, Milionis is on the look-out for more partners with those expertise.
“Riverbed’s solution is far broader than perhaps what partners think,” he said. “And that is absolutely an essential for partners to know we have opportunities in SaaS and cloud as well as the traditional network space. And, you know, we've got some great solutions, particularly around the Microsoft stack that might surprise customers and partners alike.”
Milionis joined Riverbed in November 2017 as a senior manager for its Telstra business, rising to the rank of A/NZ channel director in February this year.
His promotion coincided with that of Frank Ong as Riverbed’s regional vice president of A/NZ along with Richard Steranka as APJ leader.
These new appointments followed the exit of Keith Buckley to Citrix in January, as Steranka replaced Bjorn Engelhardt, now of Forcepoint.
Milionis said he was keen to work closely with partners throughout the COVID-19 crisis, offering equipment and training discounts when requested.
He is also keen to move partners away from just focusing on “lifecycle management” of “rip and replace”, and especially drive more focus on Riverbed’s Microsoft stack.
“We're working on some specific programmes around Microsoft, and then involves the whole Microsoft ecosystem, so not only the end customer button in the Microsoft ratio,” he said. “We're looking to bring that to partners, you know, in coming and coming months.”
