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Shashi Kiran

Senior Director, Market Management

Data Center, Cloud and Open Networking

Shashi Kiran is the Senior Director and worldwide Market Manager for Data Center, Cloud Networking and SDN at Cisco. In this role, he oversees the global market market management for products and solutions across Cisco's multi-billion dollar data center and cloud networking portfolio.

He and his team have been responsible for the marketing aspects of SDN solutions including Cisco's Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), Cisco's Open Network Environment (ONE) strategy as well as bringing Cisco's Intercloud Fabric to market with overall responsibilities for messaging, positioning, audience centric value proposition and competitive posture. Shashi and his team also work closely with Cisco sales and channel partners to scale their marketing and business efforts globally.

Previously, Shashi led the marketing effort for Cisco's $13B+ Data Center Networking, Virtualization and Enterprise Switching portfolio, which included Cisco's Catalyst, Nexus and MDS product families. He also had responsibility in other areas, including aspects of Security, WAN optimization, Application load balancing etc.

Shashi has also led Enterprise Routing product and solutions marketing at Cisco, which included the ISR and ASR families. He also was involved in Cisco's SmartGrid strategy at a conceptual stage.

In his nearly two decade career, Shashi has held leadership roles in the areas of Product Line Management, Marketing and Sales engineering focusing on Security, Routing, Metro Ethernet, Energy Efficiency and hi-touch services for Enterprise, Service Provider and Public Sector initiatives. Prior to Cisco he worked with Nortel, venture funded start-up Euclid Inc. and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (Dept. of IT, Govt. of India). He was also an editorial consultant and columnist for the Network Magazine (Indian edn.) from 1997-2001 in a honorary capacity.

Shashi has also contributed to standards bodies, primarily in security, and frequently speaks at industry events on a diverse range of technology areas.

He holds a Bachelors degree in Electronics Engineering and a Masters in Business Adminstration, in addition to executive leadership programs at Harvard and Standford Universities. He is also an active CISSP certification holder.

Follow Shashi Kiran on Twitter @ www.twitter.com/netkiran.

Articles

August 22, 2014

1

DATA CENTER

Unleashing IT magazine Profiles Early adopters of Cisco ACI

  It has been just a few short weeks since the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) began shipping, building upon the availability of the Nexus 9000 series and laying the foundation for Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI).  The feedback from early adopters has been qui…

May 16, 2014

DATA CENTER

The Countdown Begins! Cisco customers and partners prepare to roll out ACI

As spring turns to summer, just 6 months from when Cisco announced its vision of Application Centric Infrastructure, the momentum has started to pick up on all fronts – solution availability, technology integration with partners, channel awareness and most importantly strong customer traction. It is…

April 2, 2014

DATA CENTER

Introducing OpFlex – A new standards-based protocol for Application Centric Infrastructure

Continuing on its tradition of contributing and committing to open source and open standards over the last 25 years, today Cisco announced “OpFlex” – a new open standards-based protocol for Application Centric Infrastructure that has been submitted into the IETF standardization process. We believe t…

March 31, 2014

DATA CENTER

New Applications are Knocking! Is your data center OPEN for business?

Mark your calendars. On April 2nd at Interop this week we will be bringing you an exciting new webcast – “New Applications are Knocking! Is your Data Center OPEN for business?”   Register Here! Cisco will be sharing new announcements led by Soni Jiandani, SVP at Cisco.  Joining us…

March 4, 2014

3

DATA CENTER

ACI Design Principles: The role of SDN Overlays in Application Centric Deployments – Part 2

This is the second of a two-part blog series developed in association with Tom Edsall, a Cisco Fellow and CTO of Insieme Networks, recently acquired by Cisco Systems. While Part 1 focused on the role of SDN overlays and deployment considerations, this one delves into the benefits derived from such a…

February 28, 2014

3

DATA CENTER

ACI Design Principles: The role of SDN Overlays in Application Centric Deployments – Part 1

This is a two-part blog series developed in association with Tom Edsall, a Cisco Fellow and CTO of Insieme Networks, recently acquired by Cisco Systems. The intent is to elaborate on foundational design principles of Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), a transformational approach for next-gene…

February 5, 2014

DATA CENTER

Data Center and Cloud Networking Acceleration Continues – New Products, Technologies and Partners ring in 2014!

I could not have asked for a better start to the New Year. 2014 was quick off the starting blocks with January already setting the tone for the rest of the year as momentum continues to pick up in data center and cloud networking. Here are some highlights of the state of the business, new product in…

November 6, 2013

8

DATA CENTER

Redefining the Power of IT with Application Centric Infrastructure

After countless brainstorming sessions, code reviews, lab trials, scores of NDAs and nearly two years of intense speculation from media, analysts and the internet community – it is finally here! Today, Cisco is pulling back the curtains to reveal details of the vision of Application Centric Infrastr…

November 4, 2013

3

DATA CENTER

Tackling Operational Complexity – Fresh perspectives on role of DataCenter Infrastructure

In less than 48 hours, on Nov 6th, Cisco will officially announce details of its approach to Application Centric Infrastructure based on innovations from Insieme networks. [To join our Webcast with John Chambers and Insieme Soni Jiandani on Wednesday November 6 at 10:30 am EST/7:30 am PST  register…