Jayshree
Ullal's passion for technology is obvious in the lucid way she explains
esoteric topics such as cloud applications for Big Data and the future
of the internet. Selected as one of the most influential people in
technology by Forbes magazine in 2011, Ullal gave up her job at
networking giant Cisco as senior vice president to move to Arista
Networks, a start-up.
Ullal joined Arista,
founded by a group of well-known serial entrepreneurs, in 2008 as
president and CEO. "I was part of Cisco as it grew from $600 million to
$40 billion and my own division grew from 0 to $10-billion-plus in
annual revenues. But in moving to Arista, I was seeking something more
entrepreneurial and a new hill to climb," she says.
Focus on R&D
She
didn't really plan to become an entrepreneur but came on board at Cisco
when the company made its first acquisition of Crescendo, of which she
was a co-founder. Today at Arista, she finds her Silicon Valley
entrepreneurial dream rekindled in creating a new cloud networking
market and helping customers migrate to modern networks.
Even
as she concedes that her former employer Cisco is the Goliath in the
global networking industry, with around 70% of the overall market share,
Ullal believes that Arista, a private company, is ahead in the cloud
networking space. And staying ahead of competition, for her, is all
about technology.
"Arista invests three times
more in R&D in percentages of revenue than a typical public company.
We believe we have the top 5% of the engineering talent," she says.
After finishing high school in Delhi, Ullal went to San Francisco State
University for a BS in electrical engineering in 1981.
And
as a high-tech Silicon Valley CEO, she remains addicted to technology
even today. "I firmly believe that the school education system, both in
the US and India, should be geared up to encourage students to study
maths and science to create a deep engineering talent pool," she says.
She is passionate about the need for the youth to focus on pursuing
technical and science education. And the pipeline for female technical
talent is still too small, for her, even in the US.
Nurturing talent
Arista,
which opened a facility in Bangalore last year, now has 10% of its
600-strong-workforce located in India. "India is one of the key
development centres for Arista R&D and there has been big
contribution from here even for our brand new product. We place greater
emphasis on the quality and calibre of the talent rather than size,"
says Ullal.
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