Shawn Farshchi is the President and CEO of Aryaka Networks. Shawn brings more than 30 years of experience leading, driving, and managing business, technological, organizational, and cultural transformation in highly dynamic environments.
Prior to Aryaka, he was the President and CEO of Saba Software, a leader in the Talent and Learning Management space. In his role as Chief Operating Officer at Coremetrics (an IBM Company), a market leader in Digital Marketing and Web Analytics delivered through a SaaS model, he managed a broad range of responsibilities including product development, service operations, professional services, technical training, and customer service. Prior to Coremetrics, Shawn served as VP of Platform Engineering and Operations as well as the General Manager of Voice Applications at WebEx Communications Inc. (now a part of Cisco). In this role, he led engineering and product development for the Voice, Video, and Data Switching Platform, and was responsible for all aspects of WebEx’s audio conferencing solutions.
Prior to WebEx, Shawn was a Regional VP at Oracle, Senior VP of Development at BroadVision, and CIO at DHL Airways.
As part of the founding team, Ashwath has been responsible for building Aryaka’s vision and technology since its inception in 2009.
Ashwath has previously been part of three successful San Francisco Bay Area companies. He was Founder, CTO and VP of Engineering at Allegro Systems, a security startup. Allegro Systems was acquired by Cisco Systems in September 2001 for $185M. At Cisco, Ashwath held senior management positions in the Security Technology Group, and the Internet Switching Business Unit. Prior to Allegro, Ashwath was part of the founding team at Assured Access Technologies, which developed WAN access and aggregation products. Assured Access was acquired by Alcatel in 1999 for $350M. Before Assured Access, Ashwath was one of the principal architects and Director (Engineering) at Mylex, a leading RAID/storage company in the SF Bay Area. He has also held management positions at Schlumberger, Tata Elxsi and PSI Data Systems.
He holds 17 patents in storage, security, architecture and networking.
Ashwath received his undergraduate degree in electronics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Aidan is a finance executive and strategic leader with more than 25 years of experience in global technology companies within the software, networking, and telecommunications industries. Aidan has held CFO positions at CliQr Technology (Cisco), Gigamon, Sylantro Systems (Broadsoft) and Tasman Networks (Nortel). He has extensive experience scaling companies to significant growth, establishing business processes and systems, and executing to an exit strategy.
Aidan holds an MBA from Northeastern University.
Mike Hoffman is the Chief Revenue Officer and Senior Vice President of Global Sales at Aryaka. He is responsible for business growth and customer success and has over 30 years’ experience in networking technology. Hoffman recently served as Chief Revenue Officer for Big Switch Networks, where he expanded the business to double revenues and produce six consecutive record quarters. He spent six years at Gigamon, where he was Vice President of Worldwide Sales and increased revenue from $20M to $140M, to secure the company’s IPO.
Hoffman served 8 years in the U.S. Navy and is a Gulf War Veteran. He holds a BA and an MBA from Saint Mary’s College of California.
Vikas Garg is the Senior Vice President of Engineering and Operations at Aryaka Networks. Vikas has more than 20 years of experience in Computer Networking with more than 10 years of design, development and management experience in the CDN industry. Previously, Vikas was the Vice President of Engineering at CDNetworks, heading their global research and development efforts. He was the Vice President of Engineering & Operations at Speedera Networks, prior to its acquisition by Akamai Technologies. At Speedera, Vikas helped to build one of the largest Content Delivery Networks in the industry. Before that, Vikas held senior engineering development and management roles at Wave Systems, Distinct Corporation, Microsoft, and Punjab Wireless Systems.
Vikas holds several patents in the area of Content Distribution Networks, Cloud Computing and Global Traffic Management.
Vikas holds dual graduate degrees, in Computer Sciences from the University of Wisconsin, and in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alabama. Vikas received his undergraduate degree in Electronics from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, India.
Gary Sevounts is the Chief Marketing Officer at Aryaka Networks, and is responsible for Aryaka’s global marketing efforts. Sevounts brings nearly 20 years of marketing executive expertise to Aryaka, as he has built multiple successful brands, award-winning products, and effective revenue generation models – from venture-backed startups to global corporations. He has extensive experience with software and SaaS products in the IT infrastructure and security space, as well as marketing and sales technology, having held marketing and product management leadership roles with a number of industry leaders.
Most recently, Sevounts served as CMO of Zetta.net, a cloud-based provider of data protection, backup and disaster recovery solutions. At Zetta, Sevounts positioned the company as a category leader with Gartner, IDC, Forrester and 451 Research and helped the company achieve over 1,000% growth in annual recurring revenue. He also transformed Zetta’s demand generation to a 100% inbound demand-generation model with zero cold calls. Prior to that, Sevounts held senior marketing leadership positions for Panda Security, Symantec, Hewlett-Packard and Quarterdeck.
Gary holds a bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering from the Armenian State Engineering University and earned his MBA from the British-Armenian School of International Business.
Randy Barr is a seasoned Security and IT veteran with more than 20 years of Information Technology and leadership experience. Randy is the Chief Security Officer at Aryaka Networks and leads the company’s Global Security and IT operations.
Prior to joining Aryaka, Randy served as the VP and CISO of Saba Software and was responsible for building the company’s global security infrastructure from the ground up. Prior to Saba, Randy held several management and key Security and IT positions at leading cloud companies, including ServiceSource, Qualys, Yodlee, and WebEx Communications.
Randy is one of the top security officers in the SaaS space and has been selected for three straight years as a “top Security Executive” by ExecRank. Randy also serves on the advisory boards of several cloud companies. Randy is a frequent speaker at Information Technology and security conferences, including CSO Perspectives, RSA, BITS Security Forum, The Security Standard, and SaaS/Gov.
