Riverbed Technology has helped the world’s largest organisations empower the digital experience and drive enterprise performance. With two industry-leading solutions – Riverbed Unified Observability and Riverbed Acceleration – Riverbed transforms data into actionable insights across the entire digital ecosystem and accelerates performance for a seamless digital experience. Fernando Castanheira, CIO, Riverbed Technology, tells us more about industry changes and his go-to productivity trick.
Describe your current job role.
As the CIO at Riverbed Technology, I oversee our technology strategy and implementation, ensuring alignment with our business objectives. I lead a team of IT professionals, managing our tech infrastructure, core and business applications and cybersecurity.
I also have a major role in driving innovation at Riverbed, so with the recent launch of the Riverbed Platform, I particularly enjoy talking to our enterprise customers about our new AI-powered observability and AIOps solutions and the value we can bring to help them manage their complex IT environments. With the launch, we’ve been able to bring game changing observability solutions to the market including Aternity Mobile to monitor the performance of enterprise mobile devices, NPM+ to overcome network blind spots such as cloud, Zero Trust architectures and remote working and the Riverbed Unified Agent to collect additional data without adding more agents.
What would you describe as your most memorable achievement?
Over my 30-year career, two achievements stand out as particularly memorable. First, participating in the major bank merger integrations of the 2000s, where I played a key role in uniting large institutions with diverse applications and infrastructures. It was an exhilarating time and incredibly rewarding.
Second, hiring and developing diverse talent has been a significant source of pride. Many of my team members have advanced to senior roles, including six who have reached managing director level.
What style of management philosophy do you employ in your current position?
My management philosophy is collaborative, emphasising open communication and teamwork. I support my team by involving them in decision-making processes and fostering a culture of innovation where everyone’s ideas are valued.
While I dive into the details and underlying technology when necessary, my primary focus is on empowering the team to consistently achieve success. An open-door policy and flat structure are central to my approach.
What do you currently identify as the major areas of investment in your industry?
Major areas of investment in our industry include cloud computing and cybersecurity. These technologies are crucial for enhancing operational efficiency, ensuring data security and providing insights for better decision-making. For instance, many businesses will look to move out of data centres and into the cloud, especially following the recent global CrowdStrike outage.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another significant area of investment. We are at a very early inflection point, which will bring even more transformative changes than those brought by the introduction of the Internet. It’s already changed the world, and its potential to impact productivity is extraordinary. At Riverbed, we’ve been investing in AI for years. Focused on AIOps, our solutions are enabling IT teams to automate operations, including helping organisations automate tens of thousands of service desk tickets to improve user experience and productivity.
If you could go back and change one career decision, what would it be?
If I could change one career decision, it would be to take more risks earlier. I’ve learned that stepping outside of my comfort zone often leads to greater growth and more opportunities. Additionally, I wish I had explored opportunities outside of the banking industry earlier in my career.
What advice would you offer somebody aspiring to obtain a C-level position in your industry?
My advice would be to continuously seek knowledge and experiences that broaden your perspective. Embrace challenges and develop both your technical and interpersonal leadership skills.
Find a mentor early on who you are comfortable with and build strong relationships across departments and levels of the organisation. Spend time networking and collaborating not only with your peers but also with your customers to truly understand how the industry works.
What behaviour or personality trait do you most attribute your success to and why?
I attribute my success to my adaptability. In the tech industry, change is constant and being able to pivot quickly and embrace new challenges has been crucial for both my personal growth and the success of my team. I always seek out the next challenge. At a bank, you are either working on technology projects to ‘run the bank’ or ‘change the bank’. I have always leaned towards ‘change the bank’, focusing on doing things differently and improving existing processes.
What’s your go-to productivity trick?
My go-to productivity trick is time blocking. By scheduling specific times for deep work, meetings and breaks, I can maintain focus and ensure effective time allocation throughout the day. Additionally, I always block time for strategic thinking to stay aligned with long-term goals.
What changes to your job role have you seen in the last year and how do you see these developing in the next 12 months?
In the past year, my role has evolved to include a greater focus on faster cloud adoption, Digital Transformation and improving our security posture. For example, at Riverbed, I’ve recently implemented a brand-new ERP system which integrated everything from financials to Salesforce in just six months – which is unheard of.
I anticipate this evolution will continue, with an increased emphasis on leveraging technologies like AI to enhance collaboration, innovation and data collection in a hybrid work environment.