Not a Greenfield — A Rescue
When I joined Nexus IS in 2011, I came in as one of three directors, running a third of the business. The line of business I inherited had peaked at around $30 million a year — but they found out later it was all shell games and fraud. The quarter I took over, the LOB had returned more product than it had sold. This wasn’t a growth assignment. This was a rescue.
By the time of the Dimension Data acquisition, Nexus IS had grown from $130M to $660M in total revenue — a 5x growth. My line of business grew from net-negative to $180M/year, generating $21.6M in annual profit at peak. The software teams and IP I built inside the company made it an acquisition target.
The Turnaround
Cleaning Up the Fraud
The first order of business was understanding why a $30M LOB was returning more product than it sold. The answer: shell games. Revenue was being booked on paper transactions that never resulted in actual customer deployments. I had to unwind the mess, rebuild trust with partners, and establish legitimate revenue streams.
Year 1: Building Channels First (296% DC Revenue Growth)
The sequencing mattered. I built the channel organization first — the go-to-market engine that created real revenue. Recruited top talent from Cisco, VMware, and Amazon. Won first major SDN deployment at a Fortune 100 company. Established partnerships with OpenStack and OpenDaylight communities. Hit $100M in 18 months, generating $12M in profit.
Years 2-3: Then Software
Once the channel was producing revenue, I reinvested $1.4M of my LOB’s profit to bootstrap an in-house SDN development team. This was the team that transformed Nexus IS from a reseller into a software company — and made it an acquisition target. I developed proprietary network automation software, created network software solutions for Cisco Systems, and built the industry’s first production OpenDaylight deployment.
At Scale: $180M/year
- Expanded the organization from 3 directors to 22
- Led a 62-person organization through reorganization
- Partnered with engineering leaders across the business to restructure the 330-person engineering organization into cross-functional teams, enabling NexusIS to move upmarket
- Grew data center revenue 296% in first 18 months
- 500% increase in DC-capable pre-sales architects
Innovation That Changed the Industry
Working with Legends — Prem Jain and the Nexus 9000
The OVS software project put me in direct collaboration with Prem Jain — one of the inventors of the Ethernet switch, part of the legendary Silicon Valley engineering group (alongside Mario Mazzola, Luca Cafiero, Soni Jiandani) who did multiple Cisco spin-ins including Insieme Networks, which became the Nexus 9000 and ACI platform. We designed and developed Open vSwitch (OVS) software that Cisco integrated into the Nexus 9000 operating system, with integration into OpenStack, VMware NSX, and production service provider environments.
Software Development for Cisco
Beyond OVS, we developed network software that Cisco incorporated into their product lines:
- Delivered the first SDN application on Cisco’s marketplace — some of the first production SDN code in the world
- Network automation frameworks that reduced deployment time by 80%
- SDN orchestration tools for multi-vendor environments
NexusConnect Product Line
Created the NexusConnect brand — manufactured integrated systems combining network, storage, and compute into a single branded product:
- Full rolling rack deployments into data centers, scalable to 50+ racks
- Used for PCI financial processing environments
- Extended to scale-out contact center solutions
- Developed converged infrastructure standards that influenced EMC VSpecs and VCE Vblock architecture
Open Source Leadership
- Led contributions to OpenStack Neutron networking
- Founding member of OpenDaylight project
- Created open source tools adopted by thousands of enterprises
- Built community of 500+ developers
The Acquisition
By 2014, we had built something unique:
- $180M in profitable revenue from a net-negative starting point
- Software IP that complemented NTT’s global strategy
- Customer base including 40% of Fortune 500
- Team recognized as industry leaders
- NexusIS had grown from $130M to $660M total company revenue — 5x in 3 years
This combination made Nexus IS irresistible to acquirers. The acquisition by NTT/Dimension Data validated the strategy: build channels first, then software. The IP I bootstrapped with $1.4M of reinvested profit is what made the company an acquisition target.
Leadership Lessons
Building this business taught me crucial lessons:
1. See the Future, Build for It While others debated whether SDN would happen, we built for the inevitable future.
2. Talent is Everything I personally recruited every key hire, building a team that could out-innovate anyone.
3. Create IP, Not Just Revenue We didn’t just resell products—we created software and methodologies that had lasting value.
4. Community Amplifies Impact Our open source contributions created a ecosystem that accelerated our growth.
From $180M to AI
The experience of building a $180M business from scratch directly informs my AI work today:
- Pattern Recognition: I saw SDN’s potential early, just as I now see AI’s transformation
- Ecosystem Building: Created communities around SDN, now building AI communities
- IP Creation: Developed valuable software then, building AI platforms now
- Scale Thinking: Designed for massive growth then, building AI for scale now
The Bottom Line
Building a $180M business from zero proved that with the right vision, team, and execution, it’s possible to create massive value in emerging technology markets. The intellectual property we created, the software we developed for industry leaders like Cisco, and the customer base we built made Nexus IS a strategic acquisition target.
Today, I apply these same principles to AI—building not just solutions, but creating intellectual property, developing communities, and establishing the foundations for the next wave of technology transformation.