Riverbed appoints COO and former Cisco, VMWare and Salesforce leader as new CEO

Dan Smoot takes on the role to ‘drive the company’s next phase of growth’

Network and application performance firm Riverbed has announced the appointment of a new CEO in Dan Smoot to "drive the company's next phase of growth".

Smoot has more than 30 years of experience holding top leadership roles, including at Salesforce, Cisco and VMware, and joined Riverbed in June 2018.

He has already held several executive leadership roles with the company, most recently as COO as well as leading the company's worldwide sales, channels and alliances, sales operations and customer experience teams.

"Dan has been a standout leader at Riverbed and brings tremendous industry experience having held senior leadership roles at some of world's leading technology companies," said Robert Sayle, Riverbed board member and Thoma Bravo partner.

"He has an unwavering commitment to Riverbed's customers and partners, an exceptional track record driving operational excellence and business results and is a strong leader of people and culture.

"Dan is the right leader to take Riverbed to the next level and drive profitable growth for our business, and continued innovation to support customers and partners."

Smoot takes over the role from Rich McBee, who had been in charge since October 2019, and is the company's third CEO in the last three years.

"I'm greatly honored and excited to be Riverbed's new CEO, and serve thousands of amazing customers worldwide," Smoot said.