Big Switch Networks Announces Expansion Into EMEA Region With New Head of Sales; Appoints Global VP of Business Development

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwired - Nov 24, 2016) - Big Switch Networks®, the leader in bringing hyperscale-inspired networking to datacentres worldwide, today announced its expansion into the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region and that it has appointed Julian Demurjian as Head of Sales. Susheel Chitre has also joined the SDN leader as global VP of Business Development. The company's EMEA HQ will be based in London, United Kingdom.

"We are thrilled to add Susheel and Julian to our growing team, with each bringing to Big Switch years of domain expertise to assist in the next chapter of the company's growth," said Douglas Murray, CEO, Big Switch Networks. "We are pleased to have a dedicated sales and support team in the EMEA region to further serve our rapidly growing customer base."

Chitre comes to Big Switch with more than 20 years of business development and sales experience in the networking and datacentre industry. His focus at Big Switch will be to manage existing strategic relationships with Dell Technologies and Accton, and to build out the company's ecosystem of OEM, Channel and Technology partnerships. Most recently, Susheel was the VP of Business Development at Embrane, which was acquired by Cisco in 2015. Prior to that, Susheel was Director of Worldwide Channels at Cisco, where he was responsible for Cisco's global OEM business development and their Cloud Go-to-Market partner strategy and programs. Prior to Cisco, Susheel was at Andiamo Systems driving their partnership and business development efforts with all major storage vendors and technology and ISV partners. He has held various roles from systems engineering, sales and strategic alliances in the data center space with Cray Research, Silicon Graphics and Brocade.

"As a longtime veteran of the datacentre networking space I'm thrilled to be joining a company with not only innovative vision, but mature products ready for production deployment," said Susheel Chitre, VP of Business Development, Big Switch Networks. "As someone who has been in this space for a long time, I see the demand from customers for open technologies that offers more choice, flexibility and operational simplicity."

Demurjian will lead the company's expansion efforts in the EMEA region. His extensive expertise spans market entry, emerging markets, channel and partner program development. Previously, Demurjian was VP of EMEA Sales at Datiphy and prior to that he spent six years at Gigamon, where he was the Regional Sales Director for The Nordics, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. While at Gigamon, Demurjian managed a team of sales and sales-engineering resources who collectively owned a significant territory. Under Demurjian's leadership, Gigamon's revenue grew at more than 50% YoY in the aforementioned regions, where he and his teams consistently exceeded sales goals and also penetrated many key accounts within the telco and enterprise verticals.