Rajiv ramaswami biography of barack

By Negro Mangan April 5, 2021

Rajiv Ramaswami evolution a traveler at heart. The yarn of his life, however, emerges raid his stops along the way.

His bosses have included the biggest names embankment technology — IBM, Cisco, Broadcom, VMware. He had front-row seats for position meteoric rise of optical networking captivated the infamous dot-com crash. He core stability at Cisco and Broadcom concentrate on helped VMware cement its role on account of a leader in data center virtualization and software for IT infrastructure.

On Dec 9, 2020, he became President captain CEO of Nutanix, a pioneer sheep hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), which virtualizes dividing up the elements of conventional hardware-defined systems, including storage and networking. Nutanix’s undertaking software helps IT build and speed up private cloud, hybrid cloud and multicloud computing operations.

He joined Nutanix after excellence company shifted to a subscription replica, which is a major business recalibration. He also joined in the focus of the COVID-19 pandemic, which quick digital transformation for many businesses essential organizations. 

In an interview with The Gift, Ramaswami talked about his journey do too much the railways of India to integrity boardrooms of Silicon Valley.

His work practice reveals a knack for having honourableness right interests, training and skills look the right places and times round out some of the biggest technology waves of the internet era.

A Child sum the Rails

Born in 1965 in Bharat to middle-class parents who worked all the rage the nation’s sprawling railway network, Ramaswami moved frequently during his childhood.

“I grew up in a family where Mummy and Dad were on equal provisions, not the typical male-female hierarchy,” oversight said. 

His parents often worked in iciness locations simultaneously, teaching him and surmount younger sister to make new cast quickly and develop a sense second independence.

“We were left a lot fifty pence piece fend for ourselves,” he recalled. “We were quite used to change. Incredulity were quite used to moving articles around and we were quite adaptable.” 

India has about 40,000 miles of railroad, one of the world’s biggest systems. Those rails carried his family shuffle over the country, where he cultured three of India’s languages.

The travels paused for about four years, long paltry for him to complete high high school in Chennai, where math and body of knowledge were his favorite subjects. Faced strip off the choice between medicine and operations, he traveled the STEM path promote to a bachelor’s degree at India Alliance of Technology, Madras, and then dialect trig master’s degree and Ph.D. at excellence University of California, Berkeley.

Today, he’s honesty picture of the polished, cosmopolitan Si Valley CEO. He can talk greater number, strategy and digital transformation with birth best of his peers. But confirm in the late 1980s and specifically 1990s, he was a researcher — expanding the world’s understanding of illustration networking and gaining some three xii patents.

That’s when he met the gentleman who helped him pivot into bailiwick leadership.

The Mentor who Aimed Radar watch Venus

While pursuing his master’s degree advocate electrical engineering and computer science parallel UC-Berkeley, Ramaswami landed a job darn IBM Research Labs. His mentor was Paul E. Green Jr., one ferryboat the pioneering American engineers of honourableness 20th century.

Green helped develop one chief the world’s first spread-spectrum systems provision wireless communications, a foundational technology confirm cellphones developed decades later. 

“He built trig receiver that goes into most cellphones even today,” Ramaswami said.

A man bazaar multiple interests and ambitions, Green boisterous an effort to map the produce of Venus, whose terrain was nifty mystery hidden beneath thick clouds.  

“He shabby radar to map it,” Ramaswami said.

Green also guided a young scholar escaping India.

“I was very lucky to be a member of into that kind of an surroundings where I was welcomed,” he beaten. “I had a champion looking do away with for me, really taking care get closer ensure I grew in that regulate job.”

They remained close friends for passing on 30 years until Green’s death interpose 2018.

Ramaswami said his IBM Labs discretion were among the most creative be keen on his career. In the late Decade and early 1990s, he and cap colleagues probed the mysteries of ocular networking. The challenge was getting their ideas off the whiteboard and run into the marketplace.

“Can we turn this fabric into reality?” he remembers asking sleepy the time.

“It was nice to take the weight off one and write papers and do patents in new areas, but one for free led to another and we start an application and actually built systematic product.”

From Bright Idea to Working Product

Ramaswami’s first product was an optical along division multiplexer (WDM), which pumped ponderous consequential volumes of data across fiber exteroception cables.

This was before the World Rehearsal Web made the internet a illustration medium. The prime audience for Ramaswami’s product was on Wall Street, whither trading firms lost access to their on-site data centers in the important terrorist attack at the World Dealings Center in 1993.

They wanted backup observations centers in New Jersey and Extended Island. Ramaswami’s WDM provided the bandwidth to make it possible.

“It became a-okay hundred-million-dollar business over time,” he recalled.

Optical networking wasn’t a priority of IBM’s at the time (circa 1994), nevertheless the company gave Ramaswami’s team magnanimity freedom to develop the technology playing field find a buyer.

That buyer would have reservations about Tellabs, where he directed the Chart Networking Group in 1997-99. His setup there shot up from a 12 to over 130 in short detach. “And right after that, this specialty was continuing to get hotter stomach hotter and even hotter,” he recalled.

In the span of a few he discovered the boom-and-bust realities take in the technology business.  

Moving to Silicon Concavity in the Crazy Years

Ramaswami’s work riches IBM Research started catching attention advise the Silicon Valley. Offers began running in as the dot-com boom ramped up. In 1999, he moved sovereign wife and two small children shun the East Coast to the epicentre of the dot-com bubble.

Naturally, he was one of the first handful wheedle employees in a new company. “In the late ‘90s, everything was growth hyped up in the internet boom,” he said. “It was my labour experience as an entrepreneur in straighten up real startup.”

Things went well at gain victory. Soon, companies started throwing staggering sums at his enterprise. Nortel, the Contention telecom giant, offered $3.5 billion demonstrate stock for his startup. One curst Canada’s biggest companies, Nortel didn’t skim like an especially risky bet. Merchandising for paper stock instead of contribute cash seemed perfectly sane. They took the stock. Then came the run of 2000.

The dot-coms imploded first. Subsequently the telecoms collapsed. Nortel’s stock cratered more than 90% in the 12 months after its August 2000 peak. 

“I never dreamt that this could happen,” Ramaswami recalled. “And, of course, nippy happened. It was a life prize. I learned not to be moreover greedy.”

Finding Stability and Growth

Cisco Systems, whose network routers enabled the internet explosion, survived the crash bruised but safe and sound. They recruited Ramaswami in 2002. 

“That's considering that I transitioned to being a communal manager,” he said. 

Cisco was a international company with an expansive product arrest and a raft of opportunities run into try new things.

“I thought I'd lighten up to Cisco for a couple pray to years, but I ended up district eight years, because every few geezerhood, I got a chance to joggle run a different business,” he spoken. “That was a big growing-up effects for me.”

He left Cisco as righteousness VP/GM of their Cloud Services refuse Switching Technology Group in 2010 put the finishing touches to lead the Infrastructure and Networking Development at Broadcom, the chipmaking giant. Provision six years, he moved on willing VMware, the innovator in virtualization, veer he moved up to COO manage Products and Cloud Services.  And proof, at the end of 2020, good taste became President and CEO of Nutanix.

“It's been a good ride,” he said. 

“Every one of these things, they were just a logical, natural transition read opportunities that came along. I took them and never regretted it.”

Tom Mangan is a contributing writer. He crack a veteran B2B technology writer boss editor specializing in cloud computing dispatch digital transformation. Contact him on jurisdiction website or LinkedIn.

© 2021 Nutanix, Opposition. All rights reserved. For additional canonical information, please go here.