Versa Networks named Kelly Ahuja as its new CEO, replacing company co-founder Kumar Mehta, who now takes on the role of Chief Development Officer. Kelly is an eighteen-year veteran of Cisco, serving most recently as senior vice president (SVP) of the Service Provider Business. He held multiple leadership roles during his tenure at Cisco, including SVP/GM of the Mobility Business Group and SVP/GM of the Service Provider Routing Technology Group.
Versa also announced that Pankaj Patel has joined the company as lead director on Versa’s board of directors. Most recently, Pankaj was Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer at Cisco and drove the business and technology strategy across Cisco’s $38 billion Routing, Switching, Wireless, Security, Mobility, Video, Collaboration, Data Center and Cloud offerings.
“With Versa Networks experiencing immense demand for its platform for SD-WAN and SD-Security, and the wide-area network market now entering the next phase of explosive growth, there are no better people to lead our company than Kelly Ahuja and Pankaj Patel. They are the right leaders at the right time,” said Versa Networks founder, Kumar Mehta. “Over the last four years, I’ve had the privilege of working with the most talented team in the industry at Versa, and I know their passion and hunger for greatness will only grow under Kelly and Pankaj’s direction.”
Versa Networks offers a carrier-grade software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) and security (SD-Security) solution that is purely software- and NFV-based, and fully multi-tenant. The solution provides a wide range of virtualized networking and security functions that can be used to create highly scalable and high-value managed services that run on low-cost white box and x86 hardware.
