In his new role Prabhu brings his 35 years of experience in the networking industry to guide the company in delivering the next generation of NFV and SDN innovation. In that past he has described his passion for building networks on principles of openness and standardisation to achieve what he calls "evolvability, flexibility, security and scale".
Prabhu is regarded as a veteran in the telecoms industry, having worked for companies such as AT&T as CTO and president of AT&T Labs. During this time he led the company’s flagship network transformation project, which focussed on driving a new approach to open network functions virtualisation (NFV) on a global scale and automating network operations and control functions. The project is now the primary codebase for the Linux Foundation ONAP (Open Network Automation Project). Cloudify and AT&T have collaborated on the project and are also platinum founding members.
Prabhu said: “Cloudify is uniquely positioned to deliver on the promise of the next-generation of NFV and SDN through its commitment to open source and open standards. I am truly excited at having the opportunity to work with the Cloudify team to contribute at the leading edge of the industry and be a part of this great transformational journey.”
While at AT&T Prabhu was responsible for the company’s global technology leadership, including network innovation, product development and research, intellectual property organisation and the organisation of the global supply chain. Before joining AT&T, he was the CEO of Tellabs and before that he held various management positions at Alcatel, including the role of COO from 1999 to 2001.
Zeev Bikowsky, CEO of Cloudify, commented: "Krish brings to Cloudify decades of experience driving top-tier networking companies with a deep market understanding of the need for open, agile networks, having experienced the limitations of static networking first-hand. With his wealth of first-hand knowledge, he can contribute immensely to our efforts to architect future-proof and innovative networking solutions to face the challenges yet ahead of scale, distribution, edge and security.”
