An Interview with Netnology Leadership: ‘We’re Leaders in Providing Professional Services and Full-Stack Integration of Software- Centric Networking Solutions’

“Our proven methodology helps plan a strategy to manage the risk inherent to any complex next-generation networking and cloud solutions.”

Networking has come a long way and so has the network design. Faster application deployments and scalability have become big topics in today’s world. With the evolution of digital transformation, applications such as video, which requires low latency, need to be managed to provide end-users with a seamless experience. Software-defined networking or SDN is a new way to design the networks. With the advent of SDN, network can no longer be a bottleneck in rapid deployment of business services, as SDN provides the elasticity and scalability to provision network resources on demand.

In light of the foregoing, we’re thrilled to present Netnology.

Netnology is a services-only Software and Systems Integrator with technical expertise and delivery excellence in Enterprise (EN) and Data Centre (DC) Networking, Cloud, Infrastructure Security and Analytics.

The company was incorporated in 2017 and is headquartered in San Jose, California, with regional offices in Dallas, Texas and Herndon, Virginia, and state of the art Netnology SDx Innovation Labs (nSIL) in Dallas.

Adeel Ahmed & Salman Asadullah, Netnology CEO & CTO respectively, spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review. Below is an excerpt.

Why was the company set up? And how did you expand your company and its offerings over the years?

Netnology was formed to help solve key technology challenges faced by customers as they go through the digital transformation of their networks from traditional (hardware-centric) environments to more hybrid networks and software-centric solutions to evolve their business.

We are passionate about our work and believe in providing exceptional service to our customers. We are experts in providing professional services, testing and validation services, training and content development services as well as automation and software development around our technology focus areas.

Due to the nature of our team (i.e. a bunch of technology evangelists, CCIEs with programming chops and software developers), we continue to successfully deliver industry’s flagship SDx and Cloud solutions offered by Cisco, VMWare and AWS.

What challenges did you face in your initial years?

One of our key challenges was trying to build and scale our team of “hybrid” engineers, resources who have the right mix of networking and software programming skills, to design and implement next-generation software-centric networking solutions.

Lesson learned for us is to invest in building future capabilities, in addition to focusing on today’s business needs. It’s not easy to balance between maintaining focus on existing business, which drives most of the revenue today and investing in key areas of growth to evolve the business, maintain industry leadership and provide value-add services to customers.

The important thing is to hire the right people for the right job, have a common goal, and execute on your vision.

What kind of mixed responses have you received from your consumers over the years? How have they motivated you to shape your offerings/grow the company?

Responses from customers and partners have been very positive overall. They have helped shape the future direction of our company, focusing more on software-centric networking solutions and subscription-based services.

Building a culture of sustainability inside an organization is very important to maintain a reputation in the global market. How is it true for your company?

This is very true for an organization to grow and sustain its reputation in the industry, and it certainly applies to our company as well. We believe in developing and maintaining a culture within the company that is based on open and honest communication, transparency in decision making and accountability at all levels.

One of the key success factors in sustainability is developing a culture of ‘listening’. It is very important for companies to provide a platform to team members as well as customers to provide feedback and for the leadership team to listen. This can help the company to stay close to ground reality, adapt to changing needs of the business and align the goals and direction with customer requirements.

Is your company a leader or follower?

We consider ourselves to be leaders in providing professional services and full-stack integration of software-centric networking solutions.

Trust is a difficult attribute to measure and a delicate dynamic to maintain. How do you maintain this with your employees?

By maintaining transparency on how we run the business, by staying true to our values, and being accountable for our decisions. We do not have different rules for employees and management teams, everyone has a role to play in contributing to the company’s success and everyone is accountable for their actions.

If you have to list five factors that have been/are the biggest asset to your organization, what would they be and why?

• Our team members – Their in-depth industry knowledge and expertise, with over a 100 years of collective industry experience,
• Experts of multi-vendor and open-source SDx and Cloud solutions,
• Understanding of customer challenges and pain points, and how to solve them effectively,
• Ability to deliver high-quality services to customers and partners on a consistent basis,
• Netnology SDx Innovation Labs (nSIL) – Being able to connect cross-domain technology solutions to customer challenges, and leveraging SDx and Cloud technologies to solve business problems.

What do you feel are the reasons behind your company’s reputation?

We built our company’s reputation for delivering high-quality services to customers and partners. Quality and consistency is ingrained in our company culture. We do not try to be everything to everyone, rather focus on our core areas of strength and provide high-quality services to customers and partners on a consistent basis.

Where do you see your company a couple of years from now?

We see our company becoming one of the leaders in providing professional services and full-stack integration for SDx & Cloud solutions; offering subscription-based services for implementing, managing and operating SDx & Cloud networks, infrastructure security, telemetry, and analytics.

“Our collaborative culture celebrates diverse perspectives and unique technical expertise that helps our customers make an impact in their industry using both, existing and cutting edge disruptive technologies.”