loopback0 – Douglas Gourlay's Blog Data Centers, Virtualization, and Cloud Computing

a smaller company, a big job, a great opportunity

Chief Development Officer and Chairman, Andy Bechtolsheim

As many people guessed on the poll that was ran in early July on NetworkWorld I could not relax for too long -- today I started my new job as the vice president of marketing at Arista Networks. In the spirit of any good marketing executive I prepared a bit of a messaging doc and FAQ sheet to help me out in case I get questions by industry press, friends, my favorite bloggers, or the legions of Twitter-bots that follow my life's twists and turns...

Who is Arista?
Arista Networks is an early-stage start-up in Silicon Valley, re-launched in 2008, that is building networking platforms that enable our customers to build network systems optimized for high-performance computing, virtualization, and cloud deployments.  Arista has a seasoned executive team including many industry veterans and successful entrepreneurs.

Why did I go to Arista?
Candidly I was not looking to go to a start-up when I left Cisco.  I was expecting to land at a mid-cap since my friends tell me I am a bit of a 'big company guy'.  I also had many friends in venture capital tell me that if I wanted to go that route it would be best to do an operating role as a senior executive at a start-up.  This caused a bit of a quandary- I looked at many opportunities and it was amazing that, as I hoped, even in this market and economy there was an amazing amount of opportunities available.   When I looked at Arista I found a few things very intriguing:
1) I knew the executive team very well having worked with Andy and Jayshree for over ten years each, there was a comfort level there.
2) I usually can pick apart many networking start-ups architectures for making a series of 'rookie moves' that they later have to throw more money into fixing - I didn't find any of those at Arista.
3) I was very excited about the opportunity to build a software company that delivers the software through a network hardware platform - the core intelligence is the operating system.
4) I didn't see much, if any, VC investment in IT infrastructure companies yet every time Ethernet went through a major speed/function transition there were always 2-3 mid-cap companies created.

Ok, so Arista makes a switch? I don't think I would be happy at a company that just had one or two product lines. Arista has a solid vision for changing the way IT infrastructure addresses the new wave of IT architectures coming to the forefront today - But also remember the core value is the operating system, it is much more than just the hardware.

Ok, so what's the real story? Let me give an example, I met with Ken Duda who leads the software development team.  I mentioned some features that focused on network and IT operations and would make life simpler for the network team, add value to the network, and enable the network to be far more 'real time' provisioned at scale.  I have been a public proponent of this particular capability for the last eight years, but was never able to get it shipping.  I saw a demo of it last week.

I like designing products, I like watching the things I work with customers and build to solve their problems ship and become a reality.

What did I learn at Cisco that will help me at Arista? I have to say the last three years at Cisco were a phenomenal learning experience and veritable PhD in Marketing with great teachers like Paul McNab (perseverence, and technical marketing/solutions development - importance of verticals), Alan Cohen (thought leadership) Peter Linkin (rational, believable, and most importantly understandable messaging), Tom Keenan (operational management at scale, how to hire people that complement you but never compliment you), Hoff (hiring people WAY smarter than you are), and Anne Plese (social media maven, scary good marketing execution).

What will I do at Arista? I am a little daunted by the scope of the role.  Things that I used to manage cross-functionally and always have a ready opinion about I now have to either manage, or do.  I think I will be learning a lot over the next few years.  A few things I want to do though are build great products, and use every available marketing vehicle to ensure our customers have visibility to them and most importantly use them successfully in the right places.   Short version, and to quote the inimitable Justin Timberlake, 'We're bringing sexy back' - to switching.

This will probably be the last post I put up here about Arista and my role there.  I intend to keep this blog as neutral as possible and have it reflect my own opinion while respecting my position at my employer.

dg