Infinera Corp of Sunnyvale, CA, USA, a vertically integrated manufacturer of digital optical transport networking systems incorporating its own indium phosphide-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs), has appointed Rajal M. Patel to its board of directors.
Patel has more than 20 years of experience in scaling cloud infrastructure for consumer Internet, SaaS (software as a service) and other service providers globally. Since March 2014, he has been head of cloud engineering at Pinterest. Prior to Pinterest, Patel was senior VP for technical operations at Salesforce.com from July to December 2013. He was VP for cloud services engineering at Cisco Systems from April 2010 to July 2013, and held various engineering and management roles at Yahoo! Inc from 2004 to early 2010.
Infinera provides Intelligent Transport Networks, enabling Internet Content Providers and cloud network operators to scale bandwidth while accelerating service innovation and simplifying optical network operations. To address the fast-growing market for data-center interconnection, Infinera introduced the Cloud Xpress platform in late 2014, claimed to be the first server-like rack-and-stack wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) platform. Industry research firm Ovum named Infinera the number-one provider of data-center interconnection solutions to Internet Content Providers and Carrier Neutral Providers worldwide, and named Infinera as the fastest-growing company in the data-center interconnection market worldwide. Infinera says that the addition of Patel to the board broadens its cloud networking experience as it seeks to grow share in this rapidly expanding market.
"Raj has played key roles in building cloud network infrastructure at several major technology companies and brings a unique perspective on how end users, content providers and network operators are transforming to stay ahead of this market," says Kambiz Hooshmand, chairman of the board. "His perspectives should be particularly useful as Infinera continues to introduce new solutions for cloud network operators," he adds.
"The cloud represents a significant and growing market opportunity," comments Patel. "Infinera is very well positioned to capitalize on the growth of cloud network infrastructure," he reckons. "I look forward to working with the team to develop Intelligent Transport Networks that are optimized for the evolving requirements of cloud network operators."
