Board of Directors  |  Customer Advisory Board  |  Industry Advisory Board

Board of Directors

Alex Balkanski, Benchmark Capital
Alex brings 14 years of corporate leadership and operational experience to Benchmark. Prior to joining the firm, Alex founded C-Cube in 1988, took it public in 1994, and acquired DiviCom in 1998. The two companies drove the MPEG standard to dominance in consumer electronics and broadcasting, winning many industry awards, including the first Emmy ever to be given to a semiconductor company. By the time C-Cube was acquired by LSI Logic in 2001, the company was generating a half-billion dollars in annual revenue and had 1,200 employees worldwide. C-Cube is now the consumer division of LSI Logic, and DiviCom represents the largest part of Harmonic.

Alex serves on the Board of Directors at Ambarella, Aspendos, DeCru (acquired by Network Appliance), Entrisphere, Infinera, Mu Dynamics, Newport Media, Picarro and Xoomsys.

Alex holds a Ph.D. and a master’s degree from Harvard University as well as a B.S. from Harvard College.

Michael Baum, Founder and Former CEO, Splunk
Michael is a technology industry entrepreneur, innovator and investor actively working with start-up companies. He has gained a reputation for his knowledge of how to build great companies, create and win markets and assemble A-player teams. Michael is currently an advisor and board participant at Loggly, Mu Dynamics, NewTree, Rezopia, TrackSimple and Veloxum.

Michael was the founding CEO of Splunk, the infrastructure software company that invented IT Search. Splunk enables enterprises to index, search and report across all of their machine data to troubleshoot issues, find root causes, investigate security incidents and meet compliance reporting requirements. Michael’s vision and leadership grew Splunk from an idea to a $50M, pre-IPO company, and the undisputed leader in managing all aspects of IT data. Prior to Splunk, he served as VP e-Commerce Services at Yahoo!, VP e-Commerce at InfoSeek/Disney and was co-founder of Collation (acquired by IBM), dotBank (acquired by Yahoo!) and Reality (acquired by Reuters). 

Michael holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in Computer Science from Drexel University.

Amnon Landan, Investor and Former Chairman and CEO of Mercury Interactive
Amnon Landan, is a 2003 Forbes Entrepreneur of the Year and former Chairman and CEO of Mercury Interactive. An early member of the Mercury Team, joining in November 1989, Mr. Landan held numerous management positions. Mr. Landan holds a B.Sc. degree in computer sciences from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Ping Li, Accel Partners
Ping has worked in networking and telecommunications since the mid-1990′s as a financier, product line manager and executive. He joined Accel in 2004 to focus on networked infrastructures, including communications, security, computing and wireless. He currently serves on the Board of Directors at Mu Dynamics and is actively involved in Azul Systems, Consentry Networks, Imperva, Reactivity, and Trapeze Networks.

Prior to Accel, Ping was a Senior Product Line Manager and Director of Corporate Development at Juniper Networks. He managed Juniper’s M-series router product portfolio and development roadmap that generated revenues over $50 mm/quarter. In addition, Ping worked on Juniper’s acquisition of Netscreen Technologies ($4 billion transaction) and led all subsequent security and routing product and R&D integration activities. He also worked as a strategy consultant for Mckinsey & Company, advising technology clients in their growth strategies.

Ping has extensive international telecommunications experience as well. At Singapore Telecom, he served directly for the executive management team in assessing and investing in Asian growth opportunities. Prior to SingTel, Ping worked at Goldman Sachs Asia, transacting large PTT privatizations and advising telecom clients on complex restructuring and asset divestitures.

Ping holds an A.B. from Harvard University, with honors, and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Dave Kresse, CEO
Dave Kresse is responsible for the overall strategy and direction of Mu Dynamics. Previously, he was the VP and general manager of the storage management and application integration business unit at NetApp [NASDAQ: NTAP], where he led the company’s rapidly growing application integration and data/storage management software business. Prior to joining NetApp, Dave led product marketing at Leapfrog Enterprises, where he managed the development and introduction of eight new product lines. He was also part of the executive team at PowerSchool, Inc. (acquired by Apple Computer), growing its revenue and customer base nearly 10-fold over a two year period, and served as a case team leader and consultant at Bain & Company, a strategy consulting firm. Dave holds a BA degree in human biology from Stanford University and an MBA degree with distinction from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Ajit Sancheti, Co-founder and Vice President of Business Development
Ajit Sancheti co-founded Mu Dynamics and currently runs its business development strategy and activities. Before Mu Dynamics, Ajit was a Senior Manager in Juniper’s Corporate Development Group; he was an instrumental member of the team that developed the industry’s first Intrusion Detection and Prevention system for OneSecure before it was acquired by NetScreen. Prior to OneSecure, Ajit spent more than seven years at Western Digital, holding various senior-level engineering and management positions. Ajit has authored several papers, focusing on mechanical engineering, and holds U.S. patents on acoustics and vibration technologies. He has a Masters in engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an MBA from INSEAD, France.

Kowsik Guruswamy, CTO and Co-founder
Kowsik Guruswamy co-founded Mu Dynamics and continues to drive its innovative spirit as the CTO. Prior to founding Mu Dynamics, he was a Distinguished Engineer at Juniper Networks and the Chief Architect for their Intrusion Prevention product line. Kowsik joined Juniper Networks through acquisitions – he designed and architected the industry’s first inline Intrusion Prevention device for OneSecure, which was acquired by NetScreen and, in turn, acquired by Juniper. He holds 8 patents in various networking and security technologies and has an MS in computer science from the University of Louisiana. 

Customer Advisory Board

Siva Ananmalay
Siva Ananmalay is Vice President of Engineering for the Security Business Unit for Juniper Networks. Siva is responsible for the development and delivery of all security capabilities across the broad portfolio of Juniper products. He has over 20 years of engineering in the networking industry, specializing in the development of high availability solutions, and a proven track record in delivering complex, high performance and high availability products to market.

Kevin Cheek
Kevin Cheek is the VP Engineering at Ericsson Redback. He is responsible for the Engineering and development of IP software services & product Line maintenance. He has more than 20 years of engineering, customer support, and product management experience.

Robert Krohn
Robert Krohn is Vice President/General Manager of the Router Services Business Unit for Juniper Networks. Robert is responsible for delivering IP services software solutions across multiple products for the Junos Application Software Business Group. With more than 20 years of systems engineering, management and executive experience across diverse product segments, he has an exceptional track record with start-ups and public companies.

Sanjay Macwan
Sanjay Macwan is an Assistant Vice President with AT&T Chief Technology Office responsible for Technology and Innovation Programs. In his role he leads strategic initiatives to accelerate innovation through internal rapid development efforts and focused industry collaborations. He also leads the CTO Technology Council team that is the technology thought leader for AT&T and the partner community that make up AT&T Technology Ecosystem.

Robert Ormsby
Robert is Director Network Management & Security Testing with Verizon. 

Mark Price
Mark is Architecture Manager at Alcatel-Lucent. Eighteen years veteran in managing, designing and implementing telecommunications systems in both small startups and large public companies.

Shishir Singh
Shishir Singh is Director of Engineering for Cisco’s high-growth Security Technology Business Unit (STBU). Shishir is responsible for the development of Cisco’s Network and Content Security products – ASA including VPN and Cisco’s IronPort product families. With more than 20 years of product development experience, he has been very active in the cutting edge of security and media-based technologies and innovations.

Industry Advisory Board

Sri Reddy, VP of Engineering for Edge Router Software Development, Alcatel
Sri Reddy is vice president of engineering for Edge Router Software Development at Alcatel. Sri joined Alcatel via its acquisition of TiMetra, which he co-founded in 2000 coming from Nortel Networks where he was VP of Engineering for the Enterprise Products Division. He has also led development efforts for stackable switches, hubs and network management modules for Bay Networks and Synoptics. Earlier in his career, Sri was an engineering manager at Unisys/Convergent, where he was responsible for networking hardware and software for UNIX workstations.

Eric Byres, CTO, Byres Security
Byres, ISA Fellow, is recognized as one of the world’s leading experts in the field of Critical Infrastructure Security. He led numerous standards including ISA99 WG, best practices and innovations for data communications/control systems security in industrial environments. After founding the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) Critical Infrastructure Security Centre in 2001, Eric shaped it into one of North America’s leading academic facilities in the field of SCADA cyber security. Today, he is internationally recognized as a leading expert in the field of critical infrastructure security, SCADA security and industrial security. He has consulted on major security projects for governments, national security agencies and multinational corporations, and currently co-chairs the ISA99 Security Technologies Working Group. He was also responsible for the development of ISA’s security training program and received ISA awards in 2003, 2004 and 2005 for his technical writing.

Byres is also the Canadian representative for IEC TC65/WG13, a standards effort focusing on an international framework for the protection of process facilities from cyber attack. He has provided testimony to the US Congress on the “Security of Industrial Control Systems in National Critical Infrastructures” and received industry recognition with an IEEE Outstanding Industry Applications Article prize and “Donald P. Eckman Education Award” as well as ISA “Keith Otto Award.”

Gen. Anthony Charles Zinni, College of William and Mary
Anthony Charles Zinni is a retired general in the United States Marine Corps and a former Commander in Chief of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). In 2002, he was selected to be a special envoy for the United States to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. While serving as special envoy, Zinni was also an instructor in the Department of International Studies at the Virginia Military Institute. Presently, he is an instructor in the Department of Government at the College of William and Mary, a public speaker, and an author of two best-selling books on his military career and foreign affairs, most recently Battle for Peace. He also is involved in the corporate world, joining M.I.C. Industries as its president for International Operations in 2005. 

Dug Song, VP Engineering at Zattoo and Former Chief Security Architect, Arbor
Dug Song is VP Engineering at Zattoo, an innovator in the P2P IPTV marketspace. Formerly he was Arbor’s Chief Security Architect, where he designed and developed Arbor’s network security monitoring, traceback, and enforcement technologies, and architected both Peakflow DoS (now SP) and X. Song’s expertise includes enterprise network security, traffic analysis and monitoring, and network penetration. His pioneering work includes cryptographic man-in-the-middle attacks against SSL and SSH, active traffic hijacking techniques, SSH traffic analysis, Internet-wide blackhole monitoring, successful cryptanalysis of several commercial network authentication protocols, and techniques to penetrate stateful inspection firewalls and bypass intrusion detection systems.

Dug was formerly a research scientist at the University of Michigan’s Center for Information Technology Integration (CITI), where he focused on distributed file systems, security middleware, and network audit and penetration. He was also the architect of a network intrusion detection system acquired by NFR Security, and has consulted for various government and defense organizations, as well as Fortune 100 companies. His contributions to open-source software have been integrated into every major free and commercial Unix operating system.