Juniper Networks has completed its search for a chief technology officer, and selected former Google engineer Bikash Koley for the role.
He will replace Pradeep Sindhu, Juniper Networks’ co-founder and CTO. Sindhu said earlier this year that he will transition to the role of chief scientist, reducing his work at Juniper so he can devote more time to his position as CEO of cloud data centre start-up Fungible. Juniper is a Fungible investor.
Koley will be responsible for charting Juniper's technology strategy and for leading and executing several of the company's critical innovations, including the Contrail software-defined and virtualisation technologies and AppFormix, its platform for data-driven network analytics.
The Google exec is expected to begin his employment at Juniper in August 2017, reporting to Juniper’s chief executive officer, Rami Rahim.
"Bikash is a visionary who has been architecting and operating networks of the future at Google for the past ten years. I'm excited to have Bikash help us lead the transformation in the networking industry by delivering innovative products, solutions, and services for network operators around the world," said Rami Rahim, CEO, Juniper Networks.
Koley brings a wealth of experience in both IP and optical domains and in designing and operating large scale networks. He will further Juniper's vision of enabling high performance, highly-automated self-driving networks of the future.
Koley is currently a Distinguished Engineer and the Head of Network Architecture, Engineering and Planning at Google. He is an industry expert on the topics of software-defined networking (SDN), packet and optical network integration, warehouse-scale computing, and large-scale data centre interconnection. At Google, he designed, built and operated Google's production network infrastructure, spanning data centre, backbone, optical and the content edge. His team also oversaw Google's SDN evolution, network technology strategy and networking research and innovation, enabling ubiquitous programmability and very high reliability.
Prior to Google, Koley was the CTO of Qstreams Networks, a company he co-founded. He also spent several years at Ciena in various technical roles, developing DWDM and Ethernet technologies. Koley has published many research papers and received 18 patents related to networking technologies. He received a Bachelors in Technology for Electronics and Communications Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India and MS and PhD degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park.
"I have admired Juniper Networks' technology for the last two decades and believe the technology within Juniper will lend itself to an amazing programmable platform that will allow companies to operate seamless hybrid cloud infrastructures. Harmonious connectivity to clouds is not a solved problem, and I look forward to being part of the new era of networking," said Bikash Koley.
