Board Chair, President & Chief Executive Officer, A10 NETWORKS INC
Dhrupad Trivedi of A10 Networks | eSPEAKS with Chris Preimesberger
eWEEK editor Chris Preimesbirger interviews the CEO of A10 Networks, Dhrupad Trivedi. They discuss the products, uses, and ...
About Dhrupad Trivedi
Dhrupad Trivedi, CEO of A10 Networks, discussed the company's history and operations in a September 2021 interview. He stated that A10 Networks was founded in 2007 by Lee Chen and went public in 2014, with approximately 50 percent of its business coming from outside North America. Trivedi said about two-thirds of the company's business serves service providers and one-third serves enterprises, and that the company provides products for network upgrades, virtualization, security, and 5G deployment. He noted that the company acquired Abisito to create a product called Harmony Controller, which he described as allowing unified management and analytics across product categories. Trivedi also said that at least 50 percent of customers see a return on investment in less than one year. In a September 2020 message about COVID-19, Trivedi said A10 Networks was supporting health care providers and essential businesses. He stated that the company's support teams remained available 24/7 and that operations teams were working with suppliers to minimize disruption. Trivedi said health and safety were the company's top priority and that the company remained committed to its customers and partners during the challenging environment.
Transcript (25 segments)
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Chris Preimesberger0:04
Hi everybody, I'm Chris Preimesberger, editor of eWeek. Thank you for joining us today for this segment of eWeek eSpeaks, a series of video interviews with IT thought leaders from every sector in the IT business. Today our interviewee is Dhrupad Trivedi, and Dhrupad is the CEO of A10 Networks. Dhrupad, welcome to eSpeaks.
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Dhrupad Trivedi0:30
Thank you, Chris. Happy to be here. Thanks for the opportunity. I see here in San Francisco, great in the Bay Area.
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Chris Preimesberger0:37
That's a great place to be. The company's based in San Jose, actually.
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Dhrupad Trivedi0:41
Correct, yes, correct. We are based in San Jose primarily, correct.
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Chris Preimesberger0:45
How long has A10 Networks been around, and tell me a little bit about the company and then a little bit about your own background.
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Dhrupad Trivedi0:52
Sure. So the company was originally founded in 2007, and founded by Lee Chen, who was a great technical innovator, and based on creating great products around application delivery controllers. In 2014, the company went IPO and has continued to grow beyond that. Today, as a company, we are very global. About 50% of our business actually comes from outside of North America, so we have a pretty good global footprint for our size. As the company has grown, we have expanded our product set and solutions for customers as well. I joined the company about one year ago, in December 2019. Prior to that, I spent about 10 years at a company called Belden, running a couple of different networking divisions and the cybersecurity software business and corporate development roles. Prior to that, about 15 years at a company called JDS Uniphase, again different product general management roles as well as strategy roles. What is very exciting to me, at least coming into this role, was that A10 was very well positioned relative to market trends and secular tailwinds we see, and the opportunity to really benefit from there. I think that's really the next inflection point for us as a company: how do we take the great customer value, install base, and brand recognition to solving contemporary and future problems for our customers.
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Chris Preimesberger2:50
Okay, very good. Secular tailwinds, I like that term. I hope to remember that you used it. I'll use it in my next story. So, Dhrupad, tell me, could you just give me an example for our readers and our listeners to help understand what A10 Networks does? It's not really just a networking company, is it?
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Dhrupad Trivedi3:16
No, great question. So over time, our value proposition has evolved. If you look at our business globally, about two-thirds of our business caters to service providers and one-third to enterprise. For service providers, what we typically do is, if you are a service provider and you are looking to upgrade your network, add virtualization, add security, get ready for 5G or deploy 5G, we give you a set of products that work together and are easier to manage together. What that really means for that service provider is: A, investment protection because we help them throughout that transition; B, what we focus on is those customers at least 50% or more see a return on investment in less than one year. So really our focus is how do we reduce their operating complexity, their initial capex, but at the same time give them a more integrated product suite which includes security, load balancing, CGNAT, things like that, ultimately tying it to their business outcomes.
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Chris Preimesberger4:48
Okay, so it's a platform for data management. Is there a menu that you can choose the features from, or do they all come in one platform? How does that work?
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Dhrupad Trivedi4:58
Great question. I think typically the way we have approached it is, a few years ago A10 Networks acquired a company called Appcito, and through that acquisition we have a product or capability called Harmony Controller. What that allows us to do today is to use one, two, or more of A10's product categories but in a unified way as it relates to management, analytics, etc. Typically that translates directly to customers' reduced operational complexity because they are not managing six tools in six different ways. But as you know from the industry, at the same time we have to show them that those components are still best in class. Somebody will not choose convenience over actual concerns over cybersecurity, so we have also made sure that what we put together is best in class so that the ease of use is not the reason they buy us; it's ease of use combined with best-in-class capabilities.
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Chris Preimesberger6:16
Okay. Does A10 Networks work with existing applications at a company, or does it replace point products? Or is it agnostic to everything and a user can just fill in what they need?
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Dhrupad Trivedi6:32
Great question. This is still talking about service providers, and the enterprise case is slightly different, but I would say in general we are agnostic to the application. Our focus is, whatever applications you choose to deploy, manage, and drive SLAs around, we will make it more efficient, more secure for you, with lower latency, so that in your critical applications you have high confidence of delivering that application with the SLA that you promised to your customer. The differentiation on the service provider side is they are delivering this as a service to their customer, so we have a double responsibility: one is to help them generate more revenue, and second is to reduce their operating cost.
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Chris Preimesberger7:34
So what are some of the service providers that you work with? Can you name some of them? Are they familiar names?
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Dhrupad Trivedi7:42
They would be familiar names. As you'll appreciate, because of the cybersecurity connection, some of them don't want to be named, but I would say the ones we have spoken about in the past have been SK Telecom, for example. When they were leading with a pure 5G deployment, we were the supplier of choice, and we had SK Telecom speak at our events and on our behalf in terms of how we enable the transition to 5G as well as help their current networks. When they go to a mobile edge center, we are the solution that helps them. That's one example. We have some other examples in Japan, which was early, and in the US, a customer we have talked about which is in that category of service provider is someone like Microsoft.
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Chris Preimesberger8:42
Okay. So just to boil it down to a simple description, customers could use your platform to really help manage all of their application deployments, but also to help digitally transform a system from 4G to 5G and just use your platform to pick the right elements to put into the system. Is that a fair statement?
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Dhrupad Trivedi9:11
No, that's a fair statement. The value proposition for us is exactly that, combined with the fact that we have an integrated security offering which is fully integrated with it. We are not a standalone cybersecurity company, but security integrated with that approach is critical for our customers, and we make it easy for them to consume that security.
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Chris Preimesberger9:39
Okay. Even if a customer has their own security scheme already operating, this could back it up or work alongside it or fill in gaps?
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Dhrupad Trivedi9:51
It would work alongside it. We have our own experts who do security research and give them the threat feeds and monitoring and all of that. It is not a standalone cybersecurity category, but as a holistic solution to enhance networking and application delivery, it's highly valuable to our customers. For example, one of our products, which is a CGNAT product, allows customers to map between IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and therefore allows them to modernize without a rip and replace approach. So it's a lot of practical things with a path to full 5G capability.
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Chris Preimesberger10:39
So companies looking to really modernize, upgrade their systems, using the dreaded term digital transformation, if they're looking to do that, a tool like this would be a big help to them because it brings everything onto one table so you can work on it. Do we dare say that it brings all these functions to a single pane of glass, or is that too simple?
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Dhrupad Trivedi11:09
Well, I think the intent of that expression is correct. I just think you always create a pretty vigorous debate when you say it. But certainly that's the idea: customers can use multiple capabilities and tools in a simpler administrative way while at least feeling that they are getting best-in-class capabilities in each one.
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Chris Preimesberger11:38
Very good. And the bottom line is a choice is there for the users. If they want to use part of it or all of it, they can. If they want to continue using what they already have, they can. But A10 Networks helps set the table for those optimizations. So that's really good. So Dhrupad Trivedi, thank you very much for your time today on eSpeaks. This has been valuable, a good high-level discussion of what the company does. Good luck going forward. Thank you very much, and look forward to talking again in the future on some other topics. I appreciate your time.
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Dhrupad Trivedi12:20
Thank you.
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Chris Preimesberger12:21
Yeah, and you're a guy who's been in a lot of different areas of IT, so you've been there and done that. So we appreciate that.
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Dhrupad Trivedi12:28
Thank you, appreciate it.
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Chris Preimesberger12:30
Thank you for everybody following along to the end here. Thank you very much for staying with us. Have a great rest of your eWeek. Thanks for joining us on eWeek eSpeaks. Go to eweek.com to hear more conversations with IT thought leaders.