Exclusive: Interview with Charbel Khneisser, Riverbed’s SVP, Global Solutions

With over 15 years of experience in tackling complex IT challenges, Charbel Khneisser, SVP, Global Solutions Engineering at Riverbed, specialises in Incident and Problem Management, as well as Technology Architecture. His expertise lies in enhancing infrastructure performance through an End-to-End Visibility approach. In this exclusive conversation, Kasun Illankoon, Editor-in-Chief at Tech Revolt, speaks with Charbel to uncover Riverbed’s evolution in IT performance management, the transformative role of AI, and how live data and open platforms are shaping the future of IT solutions.

1. What key milestones and innovations have shaped Riverbed’s journey as a leader in IT performance management?
Riverbed’s journey in performance management dates back to 2011, when we began investing in what was then known as network performance management. By 2013, this had evolved into visibility solutions, marking a significant turning point. We recognised the importance of capturing packets to create a single source of truth for identifying issues across domains and applications. This laid the foundation for our holistic approach to digital experience management.

Fast forward to today, and we’re addressing the complexity of modern IT environments by embracing the transformative power of AI. Our focus is on consolidating data and enriching it with contextual insights, empowering our customers to achieve optimised and automated performance management. It’s been an exciting journey of continuous innovation, adapting to the ever-changing needs of our customers, market demand and the direction of the industry overall.

2. What strategies and technologies enable IT teams to proactively detect and address performance challenges without user disruption?
Proactivity comes in many forms. It can mean early detection, pinpointing the root cause, or even resolving issues before they impact users. The level of maturity a team aims for defines the strategy and solutions they should adopt.

At its core, successful proactivity depends on three pillars: the type of data collected, the locations it’s gathered from, and how it’s analysed. Data needs to span all domains, covering real user traffic rather than synthetic simulations. Correlation is key—data collected in silos will never reveal the bigger picture needed to identify and address performance challenges. When IT teams can see the whole ecosystem clearly, they can act swiftly and effectively to maintain seamless operations.

3. How does leveraging AI automation allow IT teams to prevent, identify, and resolve issues with minimal human intervention?
AI automation is at the heart of moving from reactive to truly preemptive performance management. This is underpinned by machine learning, which analyses patterns and behaviours in the data, learning from them to anticipate potential issues. This progression enables IT teams to address problems before they arise.

The next step is causal AI, which identifies the root cause of issues by correlating data across silos. With a clear cause-and-effect understanding, expert system AI takes over. These systems replicate human expertise to automate remediation processes. Instead of administrators manually resolving issues, expert AI systems handle tasks, reducing the need for human intervention.

What’s particularly exciting is how this combination of causal AI and expert system AI reduces false positives, building trust in automation. When organisations ensure high-quality, correlated data, these systems can deliver reliable results, driving confidence in fully automated processes.

4. Why is gathering and analysing live data from across the IT ecosystem essential for timely and accurate problem-solving?
The accuracy of any AI system hinges on the quality of the data it processes, which is why at Riverbed, we prioritise high-fidelity data by ensuring it’s unsampled and comprehensive.

To understand why this is critical, imagine a system that samples data every second. Over a minute, you’d get 60 data points, and a handful might reveal CPU spikes at 100%. However, if the other samples show average usage, the overall picture will mask those critical spikes, hiding potential issues. This kind of inaccuracy can lead to poor decisions when fed into machine learning models.

5. What impact do real-time, data-driven insights have on improving IT performance and operational efficiency?
Real-time, data-driven insights are transformative. By providing a clear and immediate understanding of system behaviours, they enable IT teams to respond with precision and speed. This prevents minor issues from escalating and ensures optimised operations. The ability to analyse live data ensures performance challenges are addressed before they affect end users, which is invaluable for operational efficiency.

6. How does an open platform enable easier integration, better scalability, and smarter decision-making for IT teams?
In today’s API-driven world, no solution can operate in isolation. Organisations have already made significant investments in their IT ecosystems, and these need to be preserved and enhanced.

An open platform like Riverbed’s ensures seamless integration with third-party systems, both at the input and output stages. For instance, our platform can ingest data from various sources and then connect seamlessly with tools like ServiceNow, enriching events with our analysis to drive effective actions.

Scalability is also built into the design. Our data warehouse integrates external data without storing it in our systems, which mitigates security concerns while maintaining efficiency. This flexibility allows organisations to scale their operations and make smarter decisions without being bogged down by rigid, siloed solutions.

7. What advantages does Riverbed’s decades-long experience with AI and machine learning bring to solving today’s IT challenges?
Riverbed’s expertise in AI is rooted in over 15 years of innovation, and today, our strategy has evolved to embed AI into every product across our platform. This ensures customers can unlock the full potential of our technology. Our value lies in deep knowledge—both in developing machine learning algorithms and in analysing performance data. This unique combination makes us exceptionally well-equipped to tackle the complex IT challenges organisations face today.

8. How does Riverbed’s expertise, platform capabilities, and focus on user experience make it a standout choice in the industry?
Investing in the right tools is just the beginning. To extract maximum value, those tools must work seamlessly across domains, breaking down silos to deliver actionable insights. Riverbed excels at guiding organisations through the maturity journey—from reactive problem-solving to proactive and even preemptive performance management.

Our expertise covers every critical step: collecting comprehensive data, consolidating it in a unified data store, analysing it through advanced AI engines, benchmarking behaviours, identifying root causes with causal AI, and automating resolutions with expert systems.

This holistic approach, combined with our focus on user experience, positions Riverbed as the partner of choice for organisations looking to achieve operational excellence and future-proof their IT performance strategies.