Nick Kempt Promoted to Director at Riverbed, APJ

Riverbed has promoted Nick Kempt to Director of AIOps, Alliances and Customer Success for Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), expanding his responsibilities across customer engagement, regional AIOps strategy and strategic partnerships.

Nick has spent more than five years at Riverbed, developing regional experience as the company advances its focus on unified observability, AI-driven insights and autonomous IT operations. In his expanded role, he will work to strengthen executive customer relationships and build strategic alliances with managed service providers (MSPs) and technology partners.

He will report to Paul Crighton, Vice President of Sales for APJ, according to Riverbed's announcement.

The promotion comes as enterprise technology teams look for more practical ways to translate AI and observability investments into measurable operational improvements. For Riverbed, customer engagement and partner collaboration are important components of helping organisations adopt these capabilities across complex IT environments.

Connecting AIOps with measurable customer outcomes

Nick`s expanded remit places customer value realisation at the centre of his regional responsibilities. His focus will include helping enterprise customers translate AI-driven insights and unified observability into operational and business outcomes.

AIOps applies artificial intelligence and machine learning to IT operations, helping teams analyse operational data, identify anomalies and accelerate the investigation of performance issues. As enterprise environments become more distributed and interconnected, these capabilities can help technology teams improve visibility and respond more effectively to disruption.

However, technology adoption alone does not guarantee business value. Organisations must connect new capabilities with their operational priorities, existing systems and service delivery requirements.

Nick`s role will involve strengthening executive-level engagement and helping customers understand how Riverbed’s solutions can support those priorities. The focus extends beyond implementation towards ongoing customer relationships, adoption and the realisation of value from technology investments.

“As organisations invest more in AI and automation, the focus is shifting to how those investments deliver business value,” Nick said. “My priority is to deepen customer relationships and work with our partners to turn observability, AI and automation into measurable outcomes.”

Strategic alliances to extend regional reach

Alongside customer success and AIOps strategy, Kempt will oversee strategic alliances with a select group of key managed service provider partners and technology companies.

These relationships are intended to strengthen joint capabilities and expand the delivery of Riverbed’s AIOps and observability solutions across APJ. MSPs play an important role in helping enterprises manage increasingly complex technology environments, while technology partnerships can connect complementary capabilities and support broader customer requirements.

Effective alliances require more than access to distribution channels. Joint technical expertise, aligned customer priorities and coordinated service delivery can help partners bring solutions to market and support customers throughout adoption.

Nick`s combined responsibilities across alliances and customer success connect these partner relationships with the outcomes customers seek to achieve. The approach is designed to support wider adoption while strengthening engagement between Riverbed, its partners and enterprise customers.

Supporting Riverbed’s autonomous IT operations strategy

The promotion aligns with Riverbed’s broader focus on Zero Disruption, its vision for using unified observability and AI-driven intelligence to identify and resolve IT issues faster while improving digital experiences.

Earlier in 2026, Riverbed introduced six products and capabilities intended to advance autonomous IT operations. These included Riverbed IQ 4.0, its unified intelligence layer for autonomous operations; Riverbed Q, a conversational AI interface for IT teams; AI Assurance for AI observability and governance; and new Aternity capabilities such as Replay 2.0, High Frequency Analytics and APM+.

These offerings reflect the company’s effort to give IT teams greater visibility across their environments, accelerate root-cause analysis and help prevent disruption before it affects users.

As these capabilities develop, customer engagement and partner ecosystems will remain important to translating product innovation into operational adoption. Enterprises need to understand how AI-driven tools fit their environments, while service providers and technology partners can help extend implementation and delivery capabilities.

Nick`s expanded role brings together these customer and partner priorities with Riverbed’s regional AIOps strategy.

A broader remit across customer success and partnerships

The Director of AIOps, Alliances and Customer Success role combines three closely connected areas: helping customers adopt AI-driven operations, strengthening executive relationships and expanding strategic partnerships.

For Riverbed, aligning these functions can help connect its technology portfolio with the practical requirements of enterprise customers across APJ. The region encompasses diverse markets and IT environments, making customer engagement and partner collaboration important to delivering solutions that reflect local business and operational needs.

Nick`s promotion reflects an expanded leadership mandate as Riverbed seeks to advance unified observability and autonomous IT operations across the region.

The next phase will centre on turning that mandate into stronger customer engagement, broader partner collaboration and measurable value from AI and observability investments.

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About Riverbed

Riverbed is a technology company focused on AIOps for observability and digital experience optimisation. Its AI-powered observability platform is designed to help organisations prevent, identify and resolve IT issues, improve IT efficiency and enhance user experiences. Riverbed also provides application and network acceleration solutions for distributed enterprise environments.

SOURCE: Riverbed / Hotwire AU