ACADEMIA

Extreme Networks announced the appointment of two new sales leaders in Asia-Pacific. Ex-Cisco executive Joy Ghosh was named vice president, Asia sales and Chiradeep Rao was named country sales manager, India.

Joy Ghosh is a former sales executive from Cisco Systems (IronPort Systems). He has also worked in sales roles for Symantec, Wipro and Zscaler. Ghosh's responsibilities will include sales management for all of Asia, including Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia, China, Korea, Japan and India. Ghosh was the first Asia sales leader for IronPort Systems, a leading maker of anti-spam software, which was acquired by Cisco for $830M in 2007. For Cisco/IronPort, Ghosh grew revenues from $3M to $37M. He also expanded his Cisco/IronPort team from 3 people to 62 people over three years.

"Joy Ghosh is an excellent sales leader and we look forward to the results he will achieve for Extreme Networks," said Oscar Rodriguez, President & CEO for Extreme Networks. "He has a deep knowledge of networking, extensive background in enterprise sales, and brings the leadership skills we need to regain growth in Asia."

Ghosh has a B.S. degree in engineering from NIT in Nagpur, India. He also has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, India.

Chiradeep Rao worked at Cisco as a sales executive focused on data center markets. Rao has also worked in similar sales roles for Dell and Wipro. Rao's responsibilities will include the worldwide management of sales programs for India, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. At Cisco, Rao played a key role in shaping and driving Cisco's data center business in India which is a key growth target area for Extreme Networks. Rao also led vertical sales efforts across India, focusing on the banking, government, and telecom sectors.

"Rao brings strong data center sales expertise to Extreme Networks which we expect will help drive sales of our new BlackDiamond X8 product into the growing India market" said Rodriguez. "Rao understands the importance of vertical market selling in India and we are very glad to have him as a member of our sales leadership team in Asia."

Rao has a B.S. degree in electric engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Suratkal, India and an MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur, India.