Ghassan Abou Rjeily, the Sr. Manager for Channel Sales & Alliances – GCC at Riverbed, says, despite the regional economic and political challenges, the channel in the GCC remains resilient
Could you share an overview of your career path to date, highlighting the pivotal moments or achievements that have shaped your leadership within the IT channel?
I began my career in 1998 as a hotline support agent for Allied Computer Services (Compaq Division) in Lebanon while studying at the University of Balamand. That early role taught me how to visualise problems through the customer’s eyes, rebuild scenarios, and uncover root causes. It’s a foundation that shaped my approach to problem-solving ever since.
After graduating, I completed mandatory service as a Lieutenant in the Lebanese Armed Forces, where I helped deliver a computerised system for the military judicial department to file and analyse cases more efficiently. Leading a 20-person team instilled in me discipline, respect for hierarchy, and the importance of clear communication.
In 2004, I became IT Manager at a multinational construction company, gaining first-hand experience of the customer perspective- balancing tight budgets, vendor pitches, and the pressure of keeping critical operations running. Two years later, I moved to the UAE to serve as GM for two telecom and automation firms, building teams and processes from the ground up to deliver on complex, often highly specialised military projects.
A defining moment in my career came as Program Manager for Emirates Advanced Investments, where I delivered and operated a highly secure Vessel Traffic Management & Information System for the coast guard. It pushed me far outside my comfort zone, overseeing multi-technology systems from radars and VHF to datacentres and cybersecurity, and even training the customer team myself after self-studying the intricate details. That success led to an even bigger challenge: leading the optical networks program for the UAE Armed Forces. These landmark achievements paved the way to senior leadership roles, including COO and later VP of Sales, Marketing, and Business Development at ITQAN, where I led a 400-strong team and drew on everything I’d learned.
When I joined Riverbed in 2018, I set out to complete the picture by gaining vendor-side experience. Applying all those lessons, I’ve built a leadership style rooted in empathy, understanding customer pain points, aligning with partner and distributor priorities, and orchestrating solutions that deliver meaningful results for everyone in the ecosystem. That ability to see the full sales journey continues to shape how I lead Channel and Alliances today.
As a key channel influencer within your company, what are your primary roles and responsibilities in shaping strategy, driving engagement, and fostering growth within the partner ecosystem?
At Riverbed, the channel is at the heart of our business. Our partners play a critical role in driving a substantial share of our annual revenue and year-on-year growth, which is why shaping the strategy, enabling alignment, and fostering partner success are central to my responsibilities.
My role begins with identifying and building relationships with the strongest partners in each key segment. I ensure their sales teams are fully aligned with our own, creating a seamless connection between Riverbed and the partner ecosystem to maximise customer impact. This also means ensuring partners have the operational readiness to deliver, from maintaining solid distributor relationships and favourable credit terms to ensuring they can execute orders quickly and efficiently.
Another key part of my role is enabling partners to create and close opportunities independently. I work closely with partner sales and technical teams to deliver training, provide the resources they need to succeed, and help them build confidence in presenting our solutions. Whether it’s delivering workshops, supporting proof of concepts, assisting with pricing or negotiating support, I make sure our partners have everything they need to win and deliver with excellence.
Finally, I maintain strong alignment with our distributors, who act as an extension of our team, ensuring they can empower partners with the knowledge, tools, and support required to grow and thrive in a competitive market. This collaborative, hands-on approach is what helps drive engagement and sustainable growth across the entire partner ecosystem.
How would you assess the current health and evolution of the IT channel, particularly within our region? What significant trends or shifts are you observing?
Despite the regional economic and political challenges, the channel in the GCC remains resilient. Especially in countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar where budgets allocated to IT are remarkable and an urgency to automate services by leveraging AI and ML is paramount. Also, we notice a great level of confidence from the vendors. Many continue to strategically invest in the region, even opening regional offices as this has become a mandate in some countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The biggest trends that I have observe in the channel ecosystem is the shift in partners’ focus from traditional sellers to managed services and advisory roles in AI, cloud, and cybersecurity. The demand for specialised capabilities in a crowded market has pushed system integrators to focus on consultancy skills and turnkey projects, bundling specific technologies to serve specific verticals.
What do you see as the single biggest challenge facing the IT channel in the region today, and conversely, what is the most significant untapped opportunity for partners?
The single biggest challenge facing the IT channel in the region is talent availability. This challenge has compelled leading channel partners to collaborate in innovative ways. One of these is creating consortiums to address customer needs while outsourcing other less important tasks to other channel players.
The most significant opportunity for partners is shifting to annual recurring revenue model which by ensuring predictable inflows, empowers them with agility and drives sustainable growth. Of course, I can’t help by mention the urgency of having AI resources and solutions which is an area that still presents a huge gap in the market.
In your opinion, what are the most effective strategies partners can employ to drive sustainable growth and profitability in the current market, especially considering evolving customer demands?
Partners must engage early by investing in emerging technologies, such as cloud, or AI. They need to team up with other partners or vendors to focus on results by co-inventing or bundling technologies needed to address customer issues rather than focusing on transactional business. The shift to services-based offerings remains the most sustainable path for growth as it provides reoccurring revenue and agility to shift focus by training resources.
How is the rapid advancement of AI, including Agentic AI and Generative AI, fundamentally reshaping the channel’s business models, partner opportunities, and the skill sets required for success?
Artificial intelligence in general and Agentic AI in particular, can pose as a threat for some people who have thus far been indispensable. But they must rise to this challenge, and maintain their edge as ultimately, the AI world would not work without people to maintain and develop it.
Channel players need to look at these new technologies with an open mind and leverage AI for their own benefit. For example, providing expert consultancy for customers by leveraging a world-class observability solution like Riverbed’s would allow customers to isolate problems and issues and leverage Agentic AI to solve issues on the fly or leverage Generative AI to have the necessary insights. Such solutions provide an opportunity for the partners to create the necessary bundle of technologies that would help their customers overcome challenges and develop a new type of services called Visibility Operation Centres.
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors and sustainability are gaining prominence. How can channel partners integrate these principles into their operations and offerings to create competitive advantages and meet evolving client expectations?
ESG has become a strategic priority, and channel partners have a real opportunity to help customers turn sustainability goals into measurable outcomes. Observability is key to making this happen.
In today’s hybrid, distributed environments, it’s challenging to track energy use, emissions, and device efficiency across thousands of endpoints — yet customers face mounting pressure to report and improve on these metrics. AI-powered observability platforms, like Riverbed’s, provide the real-time visibility and automation needed to bridge this gap.
With a single dashboard, customers can monitor environmental metrics alongside user experience — from device uptime and power consumption to emissions and costs — and act quickly on inefficiencies. AI-driven automation can even enforce sustainable practices, like powering down idle devices, optimising power plans, or encouraging employees to change habits.
For partners, this is a powerful story: observability not only improves resilience and productivity but also helps customers meet ESG commitments, cut costs, and engage employees in sustainability. By positioning observability at the heart of sustainable IT, partners can differentiate their offerings, elevate strategic conversations, and deliver tangible, future-ready value to clients — strengthening both customer relationships and competitive edge.
The IT landscape demands continuous learning. What advice do you have for channel partners on attracting, developing, and retaining top talent, particularly in areas like AI, cloud security, and specialized industry solutions?
As I mentioned, talent is one of the biggest challenges for the channel, so with high demand on limited resources, it now became very hard to retain resources and find new capable ones.
My advice for the partners is split their approach into two strategies. The first is long term, which would require hiring fresh graduates and train them to become the next shining stars. The best way to do that is by creating programs with the leading universities which allows fresh graduates to work or get internships. This will allow the partners to do an initial phase of screening to select the best of the best.
The complementary second strategy is to hire experienced talent. Those with experience are looking for growth and stability. Here, an appealing career roadmap with specific milestones and rewards will play a key role in acquiring such resources. And for partners that are looking to float an IPO, it would be very enticing to grant shares for the new employees. Good talent would no doubt feel more rewarded if they felt they had more personally at stake.
Finally, the partners should start by having departments for AI, Cloud, Digital transformation, Cybersecurity and other key technology areas. This shows talent that the company is focused on these technologies and not approaching them as just a trend that they want to explore.
How do you see the roles of different partner types—such as Managed Service Providers (MSPs), Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), and system integrators—evolving, and how can they best collaborate to deliver integrated solutions?
With the complexity of the new solutions, partners started to have different departments that cover all the above areas – MSP, SI, and ISV – in order to address the market demand. But in many cases, customers were hesitant to work with the same partner on all the above areas simultaneously. The partners therefore started to open up a bit more to each other and create agreements in order to overcome these market dynamics. It is true that a partner would need to split the profit whenever their peers get involved.
Nevertheless, this approach allows the partner to maintain their profitability and avoid unnecessary risks. It also allows each partner to focus on their scope and deliver to the best of their abilities. Of course, one main partner who would be heading these consortiums would have the biggest workload on a specific project, but again, this would be manageable as the partner would be very selective in choosing which consortiums they want to lead.
Drawing from your experience and looking ahead, what is your most crucial piece of advice for partners seeking long-term success and relevance in this rapidly transforming IT channel?
My most crucial piece of advice for partners is to allocate funds for development. Most partners want to see the project before they make the investment, but they do not realise that by then, it would be too late. By creating a specific monetary fund for development, they would be able to stay ahead of the curve and be ready with resources and consultants to help the customers become leaders in any new technology.
