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posted on 07 March 2008 13:28

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WAN acceleration and optimisation company Riverbed has appointed Tom Bakewell as its new CIO.

He's going to be responsible for shaping the company’s worldwide IT strategy to support continued growth and the need for real-time collaboration and data access for Riverbed’s globally distributed workforce and corporation.

Jerry Kennelly, CEO and president of Riverbed, said: “Tom has proven his ability to match IT initiatives to aggressive business goals through his 18 years working with companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies.” He wants the company's IT infrastructure to grow and support Riverbed as it grows.

Bakewell said: “In this new globally distributed and more collaborative business environment, it’s become clear that the network is the corporation, so my number one priority is to ensure that we create a high performance and flexible IT platform that delivers applications and data to Riverbed knowledge workers around the world in near real time.”

Prior to joining Riverbed, Bakewell was vice president of information technology at Coherent, Inc., where he led a worldwide organisation of more than 70 information technology staff to drive business agility, productivity and customer service through innovative, adaptive technology solutions that accommodate business priorities. Prior to this, Bakewell spent two years at Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. as CIO. In that role he was accountable for worldwide business applications, architecture, business intelligence, support, and eBusiness. During his time at Brocade he led an organisation of over 50 professionals, supporting a $600 million dollar business. In addition to his work with Coherent and Brocade, Bakewell has held senior positions at Sun Microsystems, Cobalt Networks, and California Microwave.

[Majid Soltani, staff writer.]