Cumulus Networks Expands Leadership Team With Key Executive Hires

Company Appoints Vice President of Marketing and Vice President of Sales During Period of Hypergrowth

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--()--Cumulus Networks®, provider of Cumulus® Linux®, the leading network operating system for open networking, announced today the addition of Ami Badani as Vice President of Marketing and Ron DiBiase as Vice President of Sales. The two executives will strengthen the executive bench and support the company at a time of rapid growth. Cumulus Networks has more than doubled its customer base over the past year, and through its robust partner ecosystem offers support for Cumulus Linux on more than 50 hardware platforms from Dell, HPE, Edge-Core, Agema, Penguin Computing, Supermicro, Quanta and Mellanox.

“In our conversations with customers, we see a huge opportunity to help companies of all sizes shift to Web-scale IT models – to help them realize the efficiencies and economics previously available only to the industry giants,” said Josh Leslie, CEO, Cumulus Networks. “Ami and Ron are proven leaders that share our vision and bring the perfect mix of strategic thinking and execution, startup experience and industry knowledge to drive our next phase of growth.”

In her new role, Badani will lead all aspects of marketing from messaging and positioning, demand generation, partner marketing, and amplification of the Cumulus Networks brand. DiBiase will drive higher operational scale, develop new revenue streams and grow its customer base as the demand for open, Linux-based network operating systems soar.

These executive additions follow Cumulus Networks’ recent broadening of the leadership team over the past year: James McNicholas was hired as Chief Financial Officer and Sandy Palicio was brought on board as Vice President of Human Resources. Prior to joining the company, McNicholas served as the CFO for Panasas, VSS Network Monitoring, and was a seasoned Vice President of Finance executive at IBM. Palicio’s passion for people and organizational leadership has resulted in her drive to grow and scale human resources organizations at companies throughout the Silicon Valley. Most recently, Palicio was Vice President of Human Resources for Juniper Networks and advised a number of startup companies as well as held a leadership position at Creative Labs.

Badani has a decade’s worth of experience at various Silicon Valley technology companies. Most recently, Badani served as a key marketing leader at Instart Logic, helping to triple its sales growth and lead the disruption of the application delivery market. Prior to Instart Logic, Badani was Head of Strategic Marketing at Cisco where she co-founded and incubated the Internet of Things Platform as a Service business and launched the platform out of stealth mode.

“I couldn’t be more pleased to join a company that has built its foundation as a startup challenging the status quo. I’m looking forward to strengthening Cumulus Networks’ market lead and breaking through new frontiers,” said Badani.

Bringing deep experience in networking and application software, DiBiase joins from Aruba Networks, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company as the Vice president of Global Software Sales where he was responsible for Aruba’s worldwide sales and go-to-market efforts for the ClearPass product. DiBiase has a 30 plus year track record including several successful early stage start-ups and major players in the networking and security industries. He succeeds Josh Leslie, who was Cumulus Networks’ Vice President of Sales before being tapped as CEO in March.

DiBiase commented, “With more than 500 customers globally – from small businesses to the largest web-scale data centers in the world, it’s clear Cumulus Networks has built a strong coalition. I’m looking forward to growing our community and continuing to enrich the experience of our customers.”

Badani and DiBiase's new roles with Cumulus Networks are effective immediately.

Resources:
Executive bios: https://cumulusnetworks.com/team/
Executive headshots: http://bit.ly/2bcQCao

About Cumulus Networks

Cumulus Networks demystifies the complexity of networking and enables better, faster, easier networks to support your business. Our network operating system, Cumulus® Linux®, allows you to build and operate your network with the mindset of the web-scale pioneers like Google and Amazon, radically reducing the costs and complexities of modern data center networks. More than 500 organizations, including some of the largest-scale data center operations in the world, run Cumulus Linux. Cumulus Networks has received venture funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Peter Wagner and four of the original VMware founders.

For more information visit cumulusnetworks.com or follow @cumulusnetworks.

©2016 Cumulus Networks. All rights reserved. CUMULUS, the Cumulus Logo, CUMULUS NETWORKS, and the Rocket Turtle Logo (the “Marks”) are trademarks and service marks of Cumulus Networks, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. You are not permitted to use the Marks without the prior written consent of Cumulus Networks. The registered trademark Linux® is used pursuant to a sublicense from LMI, the exclusive licensee of Linus Torvalds, owner of the mark on a world-wide basis. All other marks are used under fair use or license from their respective owners.

Contacts

Bite for Cumulus Networks
Samantha Bosio, +1-415-365-0364
cumulus@biteglobal.com

Release Summary

Cumulus Networks, provider of Cumulus Linux, the leading network operating system for open networking, announced today the addition of Ami Badani as VP of Marketing and Ron DiBiase as VP of Sales.

Contacts

Bite for Cumulus Networks
Samantha Bosio, +1-415-365-0364
cumulus@biteglobal.com