Management Team

Dr. Parag Pruthi, Founder, Chairman and CEO

Dr. Pruthi is the founder of NIKSUN INC. Dr. Pruthi brings over twenty one years of expertise in network security, surveillance, data warehousing / mining, and systems performance evaluation. Based upon his doctoral research on the use of Chaos theory to model high variability phenomenon in networking, Dr. Pruthi along with notable colleagues in the industry developed unique methods of analyzing network traffic enabling a scalable and integrated approach to network security and performance.

At NIKSUN, Dr. Pruthi drives the vision and strategic thinking for the company. His goals are to create a unified and holistic solution for end-to-end network security while guaranteeing end-to-end service delivery requirements. The novel approach to solving this complex and long standing open challenge has been a revolutionary approach integrating successfully seemingly disparate scientific disciplines such as chaos theory, data warehousing, data mining, parallel processing, and hierarchical distributed computing. It is his belief that only by using such advanced and novel techniques will one be able to develop capabilities for advanced control of network systems and services ensuring the highest levels of security without sacrificing end-to-end performance objectives. Over the past several years, Dr. Pruthi has led NIKSUN from a garage startup to a profitable enterprise. With customers ranging all over the globe from financial institutions to governments, the broad ranging applicability of NIKSUN's technology has not even reached a fraction of the addressable market. Dr. Pruthi's goal is to continue to use sound business fundamentals to lead NIKSUN to address the broader markets by constantly innovating a well-defined set of security and performance solutions. Prior to founding NIKSUN, Dr. Pruthi was at Bellcore, Telcordia and other research institutions. In his prior career, he was instrumental in developing leading edge tools for large-scale collection and analysis of data from production carrier and enterprise networks. His expertise stems from solving important problems in security, telephony, broadband, and wireless network management. Dr. Pruthi holds a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering and a Master's in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology, and a Doctorate in Telecommunications from The Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. His thesis was titled "An Application of Chaotic Maps to Packet Traffic Modeling", which was the first thesis in applying chaotic and fractal or self-similar systems to accurately model the seemingly erratic nature of network traffic. Please click here to watch an interview with Dr. Pruthi, conducted by General Norman Schwarzkopf on CNBC. You may also read Dr. Pruthi's chapter, entitled Delivering a Long-Term Vision for Software, which was part of the critically acclaimed Inside the Mind series that provides readers with proven business intelligence from C-level executives (CEO, CFO, CTO, CMO, Partner) from the world's most respected companies.

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Satish Pruthi, President, COO and CFO

Mr. Satish Pruthi has been actively involved with NIKSUN since the last quarter of 1998. He has a wide range of business experience, spanning over 36 years, with both small and large companies, and has participated in three business startups. He has also played a key role in turning around various divisions of large multinational companies in the U.A.E. Mr. Pruthi was the founder of, and has served as the President of various multinational companies such as, APEX USA INC, and WOTEK INC (New Jersey, USA). He has also served as the General Manager of Jumma-Al-Majid Est. and Al Futtaim Group in U.A.E., where he built-up market leadership in various divisions of these companies starting with a staff of around 20 to a steadily increasing staff of more than 400 within three years. Mr. Pruthi brings extensive practical experience in business operations, including but not limited to: operations, marketing, and financing.   Mr. Pruthi is the guiding light which keeps NIKSUN on firm footing even at times of tremendous growth.

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Rangnath (Rangu) Salgame, SVP Worldwide Sales

Mr. Rangnath (Rangu) Salgame is the Senior Vice President and President of Worldwide sales for NIKSUN, Inc. He came to NIKSUN with twenty years of operating experience, managing revenues ranging from multi-million to multi-billion dollars with Cisco, Edgix, Verizon and PwC. His experience spans across, both, young and established corporations: building and scaling businesses, sales and marketing, opening new markets and operating in most major parts of the world. He has deep go-to-market experience with direct, vertical and channel based selling.  He is reputed to drive organizations with his exceptional leadership skills and ability to build high performing teams. Before joining NIKSUN, Mr. Salgame was the President of Global Projects with Cisco where he was responsible for building two new global business units. Prior to this role, he was the President of Cisco India, South Asia and the ASEAN regions, based out of Bangalore and Singapore. He has been recognized to have catapulted Cisco India to an undisputable market leadership position and established high growth initiatives in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. Prior to his position with Cisco, Mr. Salgame was the CEO and President of Edgix, an Internet content delivery startup in New York, and a senior executive with Verizon Communications in New York, where he was the founder and President of Verizon’s enterprise internet business. Mr. Salgame holds an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He also has an MS in engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a BS in engineering from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India.

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David Arbach, VP Sales Operations

Mr. Arbach came to NIKSUN with twenty plus years of diverse leadership experience in finance, business operations, and business planning and development.  He is a change agent and has demonstrated experience in financial turnarounds, corporate restructuring and new product launches. As VP of Operations he is responsible for Sales Operations, Customer Support and Manufacturing.

Before joining NIKSUN, Mr. Arbach was the Group President of Telecom Services for Telcordia Technologies, where he was responsible for the development of Telcordia’s professional and consulting services brand and capabilities. In his 20-year tenure at Telcordia he held several executive positions in finance, operations and business planning. Prior to joining Telcordia was a member of the audit staff at Deloitte.

Mr. Arbach holds an MBA from Rutgers Graduate School of Management. He also has a BS in Accounting from Villanova University.

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Andrew Heybey, Chief Architect

Mr. Heybey is Chief Architect at NIKSUN Inc. and is responsible for the design, architecture and implementation of NIKSUN's core technologies. He has over 20 years of experience in operating systems, networking and software engineering.  A core member of the NIKSUN team, Mr. Heybey has led NIKSUN's design and development efforts since 1998 and has been instrumental in bringing the company's patented technology to market. He has extensive experience in implementing and leading complex multi-faceted projects involving extremely high rate network traffic processing, data warehousing, application analytics, forensics and security.

Mr. Heybey received his BS and MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He has worked in research at MIT and Telcordia (formerly Bellcore) before joining NIKSUN as Chief Architect.

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James Van Bokkelen, VP Security Forensics

Mr. Van Bokkelen comes to NIKSUN with 28 years of experience in operations, sales, marketing and software development. He is an entrepreneur with broad interest in networking and communication. His recent focus has been on recognition, analysis, forensics and visualization of network traffic and data.

Prior to joining NIKSUN, Mr. Van Bokkelen was Founder and President of Sandstorm Enterprises Inc., a developer of IP network and security monitoring solutions and telephone systems scanning software. Mr. Van Bokkelen was with Sandstorm from its inception in 1998 to its acquisition by NIKSUN in 2010. At Sandstorm, he also served as the primary architect of NetIntercept, a network forensics analysis tool. Previously, he had been a founder of FTP Software, a pioneer in the internet access field, serving at various times as President, VP Sales and Marketing and VP Engineering. Earlier in his career, he worked as Manager of Software Development at Perception Technology, a pioneer in the Voice Response area.

Mr. Van Bokkelen attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His publications include internet RFCs and other contributions to the IETF.

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Suby Gupta, VP Engineering

Mr. Gupta has over 19 years of technical and managerial experience in the telecommunication, semiconductor, and design automation industries. He is proficient at managing complex design projects and cross-functional teams focused on the delivery of products from concept to production. His expertise lies in being a change agent in establishing and implementing cutting-edge design, infrastructure, and processes necessary to meet the demands of a high growth market.  Prior to joining NIKSUN, Mr. Gupta worked at Lucent Technologies (Bell Labs) as a Senior Technical Manager. Among other things, his responsibilities included Portfolio Management, Risk Management, Vendor Negotiations, and Quality Metric Management. He was also an expert in offshore project management where he was responsible for architecting, designing, and interfacing with overseas firms and ensuring high quality deliverables. Mr. Gupta began his career at IBM, where he started as a hardware verification engineer. He then moved to Racal-Redac, where he managed a number of personnel and training centers leading the integration of various technologies into mainstream markets. He also managed the consulting services group for Protocol, the services arm for Zycad Corporation.  Mr. Gupta received a BS and MS in Computer Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology, NJ as a transfer student from IIT-Kharagpur, India.

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Julius Alberici, VP Sales Operations

Mr. Julius Alberici is the Vice President of Sales Operations for NIKSUN, Inc. He came to NIKSUN after a 23 year career at NCR Corporation and Lucent Technologies. During his career he successfully held numerous sales, sales management and sales operations positions at both the field and headquarters level. Mr. Alberici possess significant expertise at selling high technology products into major accounts. He started with NCR as a computer salesperson in NYC and rose through the ranks to hold various sales management positions with NCR in the NY Region. He held a number of NCR Headquarters positions including Director of Global Sales Education where he led the implementation of programs to transition the sales organization from product to consultative selling approaches. At Lucent Technologies, as Director of Sales Operations Support Systems he led the worldwide implementation of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and processes which were adopted as the company standard for sales management. Mr. Alberici holds a BA and Masters in Public Administration from NYU and has a Certificate in Programming, Systems Design and Analysis from NYU. He has taught sales and sales management courses and has taught Strategic Management as an Assistant Professor at Rider University in New Jersey.

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Syed Rashid, VP Corporate Business Development

Mr. Rashid came to NIKSUN with more than 18 years of experience in the technology investment banking arena. His career spanned a variety of Wall Street firms that focused on enterprise security, software, semi-conductor, communication systems, and components sectors. As the Vice President of Corporate Business Development, Mr. Rashid is responsible for NIKSUN's mergers and acquisitions, equity investments, and creation of new strategic partnerships.  As a senior technology banker, Mr. Rashid provided corporate business development and financial advisory services ranging from mergers and acquisitions, to private and public financing. He started his investment banking career as an Associate in the mergers and acquisitions group of Nomura Securities International, Inc. and later became the Director of Corporate Finance. Mr. Rashid has held senior banking positions at Needham & Co., Merriman Curhan Ford & Co. and Kaufman Brothers L.P. Early in his career, he worked as a Project Engineer at Fluor Corporation in Irvine, CA. Mr. Rashid holds a BS and a MS degree in chemical engineering along with an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

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