Bringing critical technology provider perspectives to the strategic work of MEF.
The MEF Technology Advisory Board (TAB) brings critical technology perspectives to the strategic work of MEF. Through extensive collaboration with the Board of Directors and MEF membership, the TAB further strengthens MEF’s mission to accelerate enterprise digital transformation through a better-together ecosystem of service, cloud, and technology providers.
Members of the Technology Advisory Board are selected to serve a one-year term based on their extensive industry leadership in MEF’s strategic areas—cybersecurity, business automation, SD-WAN, underlay connectivity, and edge computing.
Kelly Ahuja
CEO,
Versa Networks
Kelly Ahuja is a seasoned industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience in networking and telecommunications. He currently serves on the board of directors for two startups in Silicon Valley.
Kelly spent 18 years at Cisco rooted in the design and deployment of telecommunications networks. He was most recently SVP of Service Provider Business, Products and Solutions at Cisco where he was responsible for developing and managing the service provider segment strategy and portfolio. Kelly held several other senior executive roles at Cisco, including SVP and GM of the Mobility Business Group, Chief Architect for the Service Provider business, and SVP and GM of the Service Provider Routing Technology Group.
Earlier in his career, Kelly served as VP of Marketing at optical networking startup BlueLeaf Networks and product management leader at Stratacom. He also managed the design and deployment of data and voice networks for AT&T Canada, Bank of Canada and Telesat Canada.
Kelly holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Calgary.
Abe Ankumah
Vice President & General Manager,
VMWare
Abe Ankumah is Vice President & General Manager for VMware’s SD-WAN and SASE business. Abe joined VMware via the Nyansa acquisition in February 2020. Prior to joining VMWare, Abe was CEO and Co-Founder of Nyansa, Inc. a fast-growing innovator of AI-based network analytics based in Palo Alto, CA.
Before Nyansa, Abe was Director of Products and Alliances at Meraki (acquired by Cisco). Abe also held multiple leadership roles at Aruba Networks (now part of HP) in product management and business operations. Earlier in his career, Abe was part of the founding engineering team at the fabless semiconductor company, Fulcrum Microsystems (acquired by Intel), a leader in the low-latency Ethernet switching market. Abe began his career working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.
Abe holds a BS degree from Caltech and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He is also an inventor on multiple patents.
Ari Banerjee
Senior Vice President Strategy,
Netcracker Technology
Ari Banerjee works for Netcracker as Senior Vice President of Strategy, responsible for the company’s strategic direction and enabling it to address changing market and technology opportunities. He is responsible for all aspects of Netcracker’s strategic initiatives across its portfolio of software solutions, including customer, product and technology management, market direction and corporate communications.
Ari interfaces with CTOs and CIOs at customers and prospects to ensure the alignment of technology, products and services while providing strategic input to the CTO office, product management and R&D teams. In his role, Ari collaborates with industry organizations, standards bodies, media and analysts and is responsible for running marketing and strategic partner programs for Netcracker.
Rohit Batra
Vice President and Head of Product Management for Telecom, Media and Technology,
ServiceNow
Rohit is VP and Head of Product Management for Telecom, Media and Technology at ServiceNow. As part of his role, Rohit leads the TMT product strategy and roadmap pertaining to domains such as network and service experience, order management and customer experience for ServiceNow customers. Prior to ServiceNow, Rohit ran the solutions and product strategy teams at various organizations including Salesforce, Amdocs, Oracle and Comverse. He has over 20 years of experience in TMT industry across Customer Experience and BSS/OSS domain running delivery, solutions, and product management functions.
Suraj Chandrasekaran
Regional Vice President of SASE for Global MSP/MSSPs,
Palo Alto Networks
Suraj Chandrasekaran currently serves as the Regional Vice President of SASE for Global MSP/MSSPs at Palo Alto Networks. His primary responsibility is to help accelerate the adoption of Palo Alto’s SASE solutions worldwide via top MSPs/MSSPs across the globe. He works with the Product team to drive the required technology to help MSPs adopt the solution with minimal effort, coming up with disruptive GTM strategies, and drives a team of subject matter experts to help evangelize SASE adoption.
With a rich background in Network and Network Security technologies working for companies such as Ericsson, Juniper Networks, FireEye, and Versa Networks, Suraj has more than 20 years of experience bringing new innovative solutions to the market via multiple Channels and Service Providers.
Suraj Chandrasekaran holds a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from Santa Clara University, California, specializing in Network Security, and a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Bharathiar University in India.
Gabriele Di Piazza
Vice President, Product Management, Alliances and Architectures,
Blue Planet
Gabriele Di Piazza is Vice President of Product Management, Alliances and Architectures for Blue Planet, a division of Ciena. He is responsible for leading and driving the evolution of Blue Planet’s product roadmap, as well as amplifying Blue Planet’s vision with its customers and technology partners.
Prior to joining Blue Planet, Gabriele led the Telecom Industry group for Google Cloud, driving strategy and adoption for a portfolio of Telecommunications products and solutions, across network modernization, subscriber monetization and data & artificial intelligence transformation.
Gabriele has more than 25 years of enterprise and communication service provider (CSP) expertise in product management, marketing and business development, holding leadership roles at VMware, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Guavus (Thales).
Gabriele holds a master’s degree in Electronic Engineering with a major in Telecom Networks from Politecnico di Milano University.
David Fan
Vice President and General Manager of Communications Cloud,
Salesforce
David Fan currently serves as the Vice President and General Manager of Communications Cloud at Salesforce. David joined Salesforce through the Vlocity acquisition in 2020. He has over 20 years of CRM and BSS experience in Communications, holding various leadership roles in product management, application development and global transformation implementations.
Prior to joining Salesforce and Vlocity, David served as VP of Industry Strategy and Product Management at Oracle where David led the product team in developing industry CRM solutions and fostered the ecosystem that made Oracle CRM/CX a market leader in Communications. He was also the Vice-President at Huawei Technologies for 3 years where he led the company’s BSS application strategy and product management.
Suresh Katukam
Co-founder and Chief Product Officer,
Nile
Suresh Katukam is an experienced technologist and entrepreneur with a proven track record of successfully building and launching a range of products. Prior to co-founding Nile, Suresh held positions at companies such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Aruba Networks, Cisco, and various startups.
With over 25 years of industry experience, Suresh has held diverse roles encompassing product management, engineering, business development, investments, and acquisitions. He has also made contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence, publishing several research papers and co-authoring industry standards and IETF drafts. Additionally, Suresh is an inventor with 40 patents to his name.
Suresh holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from BITS, Pilani, India, a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Arizona State University, and an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA.
John Maddison
Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President, Products,
Fortinet
John Maddison has more than 30 years of executive management experience in the Cybersecurity and Telecommunications Industries. He joined Fortinet in 2012 to lead Cloud/SaaS Security development teams and is now the Chief Marketing Officer and EVP Products. He previously held executive leadership positions at Trend Micro focused on Advanced Threat Research and Cloud Delivered Security Services. He started his career with Lucent Technologies Mobile Division, Hewlett Packard Software and Cable & Wireless Global Networking. John holds a B.S. degree in Telecommunications Engineering from Plymouth University, United Kingdom.
Rajiv Papneja
Chief Technology Officer,
Prodapt
As CTO, Rajiv provides overall end-to-end solutions leadership across Prodapt’s industry partnerships and technology practices – Cloud, AI, Data, Network Services, Billing and support systems, and Operational Excellence.
Rajiv is a business leader, change agent, and transformation advisor who synergizes technology strategy and business alignments, bringing completive differentiation to our clients through cross-functional team management and cross-pollinating expertise.
Prior to Prodapt, Rajiv was CTO at a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, and smart devices. He also co-founded a startup focusing on network of the future, third-party interoperability and testing for the telecommunications industry.
Rajiv is a patent holder in wireless networks and an industry leader across forums including the Open Networking Foundation. He has co-authored several publications including 8 Request for Comments (RFC) in notable areas like SDN, Network Disaggregation, Edge Services, IP-Optical routing and switching, and more.
He holds a Master’s degree from George Mason University, Virginia, and is an alumnus of The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, New Hampshire.
Doug Roberts
Senior Vice President and General Manager, Automated Test & Assurance,
Spirent Communications
Doug Roberts is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Spirent Communications’ Automated Test & Assurance business unit. Doug has over 25 years of experience across various product innovation and business transformation roles.
Before joining Spirent, Doug held leadership positions at VIAVI and NetScout. With over 14 years of his career spent at Danaher, Doug is well-known for bringing a disciplined approach that yields results in a predictable manner. He has provided his subject matter expertise in network analysis, application performance, and digital transformation to the world’s largest Service Providers, along with thousands of private enterprises through guest speaking and keynote invitations that include RSA Conference, Cisco Live, TechNet, and Amazon’s re:Invent.
Doug holds an MBA in Corporate Finance from Mercer University and concluded his undergraduate work in Computer Engineering and Business Management at Georgia Tech and Mercer University.
Ken Urquhart
Global Vice-President of 5G Strategy,
Zscaler
Dr. Ken Urquhart is Global Vice-President of 5G Strategy at Zscaler. He holds three degrees in Physics and executive roles at Sun Microsystems, IBM, and Microsoft.
Prior to joining Zscaler, Ken consulted with Fortune 2000 companies on 5G, AI, and cybersecurity.
Hugo Vliegen
VP Product Management & Technical Marketing, Enterprise Routing & SD-WAN,
Cisco
Hugo Vliegen has global responsibility for product management and technical marketing for Enterprise Routing & SDWAN. Hugo has 25+ years of experience in marketing and technology leadership roles.
Over the years, he has worked with numerous enterprise customers, service providers, and channel partners to define business strategies and product/solution requirements for networking and security infrastructure. Hugo also brings experience from working at cloud and IoT startups, including Aryaka, Nebbiolo and Infogear (acquired by Cisco). He is the cofounder of several new product lines in the networking and security space generating $100M+ in yearly revenues. Hugo started his career in Manufacturing IT and Automation.
Hugo earned a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Twente and graduated with Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from the Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands.