SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - Oct 6, 2011) - [ Riverbed Technology ] (NASDAQ: [ RVBD ]), the IT performance company, today announced the company received the Global Technology Distribution Council's (GTDC) Gold Rising Star award in the $100 million to $500 million U.S. distribution sales category, based on its strong performance in year-over-year U.S. revenue growth through distributors. The GTDC, a worldwide industry association dedicated to defining and promoting the role of the wholesale technology distribution industry, presented the award as part of its annual Vendor Summit event, held September 20-21 at the Fairmont Hotel in Newport Beach, California.

GTDC members represent more than $100 billion in annual worldwide channel sales. GTDC Rising Stars are selected from among hundreds of technology vendors, and are distinguished for their ability to forge strong partnerships with technology distributors to produce exceptional results.

"We formalized our North America distributor partnerships in 2010, which was a strategic move to deliver a more comprehensive Riverbed Partner Network that enables our partner community to better meet the demand for Riverbed IT performance solutions," said Randy Schirman, senior vice president of worldwide channels at Riverbed. "Our distribution partners have enabled us to further scale our reach and better service the needs of our customers, and have acted as extended arms of the sales channel with staff dedicated to the success of Riverbed and our customers."

Rising Star Awards Methodology

Sales figures that determine Rising Star award winners are based on the past year's U.S. revenue. To be eligible for a GTDC Rising Star award, vendors are required to have sold corresponding products through IT distributors for a minimum of one year. Categories include:

• $500 million or more in U.S. distribution sales/highest year-over-year revenue growth
• $100 - $500 million in U.S. distribution sales/highest year-over-year revenue growth
• $25 million - $100 million in U.S. distribution sales/highest year-over-year revenue growth
• Software vendors with sales of at least $20 million/highest year-over-year revenue growth

More than 13,000 organizations worldwide, across a wide range of markets, depend on Riverbed to understand, optimize and consolidate their IT infrastructure. Riverbed delivers hardware, software and virtualized solutions that overcome performance issues caused by distance, distributed computing, and ever increasing amounts of data. [ Virtualization, consolidation ] and cloud computing promise huge [ cost savings ] and improved efficiencies, but as users move farther from their data, slow applications and file transfers can stall these strategic initiatives. Riverbed delivers to the remote office and [ mobile workers ] the same "local area network (LAN)-like" [ performance ], no matter where the private data center or [ public cloud ] may be. Riverbed continues building on its success in the wide area network [ (WAN) optimization ], application-aware network performance management ([ NPM ]) and data protection markets with new and innovative solutions for accelerating [ cloud storage ] and access to applications and data deployed in public, private and [ hybrid clouds ].

Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements relating to the expected demand for Riverbed's products and services, statements about historical sales results and sales growth that may suggest trends for our business, and statements relating to Riverbed's ability to meet the needs of distributed organizations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they do not fully materialize or prove incorrect, could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include our ability to react to trends and challenges in our business and the markets in which we operate; our ability to anticipate market needs or develop new or enhanced products to meet those needs; the adoption rate of our products; our ability to establish and maintain successful relationships with our distribution partners; our ability to compete in our industry; fluctuations in demand, sales cycles and prices for our products and services; shortages or price fluctuations in our supply chain; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; general political, economic and market conditions and events; and other risks and uncertainties described more fully in our documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. More information about these and other risks that may impact Riverbed's business are set forth in our Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on July 29, 2011. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Any future product, feature or related specification that may be referenced in this release are for information purposes only and are not commitments to deliver any technology or enhancement. Riverbed reserves the right to modify future product plans at any time.

About Riverbed
Riverbed delivers performance for the globally connected enterprise. With Riverbed, enterprises can successfully and intelligently implement strategic initiatives such as virtualization, consolidation, cloud computing, and disaster recovery without fear of compromising performance. By giving enterprises the platform they need to understand, optimize and consolidate their IT, Riverbed helps enterprises to build a fast, fluid and dynamic IT architecture that aligns with the business needs of the organization. Additional information about Riverbed (NASDAQ: [ RVBD ]) is available at [ www.riverbed.com ].

Riverbed and any Riverbed product or service name or logo used herein are trademarks of Riverbed Technology, Inc. All other trademarks used herein belong to their respective owners.

About The Global Technology Distribution Council
The Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) is a worldwide industry association dedicated to defining and promoting the role of wholesale distribution in a successful and healthy information technology channel. The Council is comprised of the computer industry's top wholesale distributors dedicated to serving "the channel," a network of skilled value-added resellers and retail stores focused on providing hardware, software, and services to businesses and consumers around the globe.