The SDxCentral editorial team reflected back on 2022's twists and turns. From enterprises to people, we cut through the noise and the news to consider who we thought were the top movers and shakers in the tech and telecom industry.
Read on to find out who our reporters and editors chose and why.
CybersecurityMandiant: Google acquired Mandiant in September for $23 per share in an all-cash deal valued at around $5.4 billion. Analysts expected the deal to exemplify Google’s ambitions in the cybersecurity market and better its position to compete with Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) over cloud security.
Also in 2022, Mandiant held its first-ever mWISE event. Mandiant CEO Kevin Mandia and Google Cloud CISO Phil Venables discussed the top security trends and predictions during the keynote speech. — Nancy Liu, editor, cybersecurity, quantum
QuantumIBM: IBM unveiled the largest quantum bit count (433 qubits) of its quantum computers to date, named Osprey, at this year’s IBM Quantum Summit. The IBM Osprey more than tripled the qubit count of its predecessor — the 127-qubit Eagle processor, launched in 2021. The company put its first quantum computer on the cloud in 2016, and aims to launch its first 1,000-plus qubit quantum processor (Condor) next year and a 4,000-plus qubit processor around 2025. — Nancy Liu, editor, cybersecurity, quantum
SASEShlomo Kramer and Gur Shatz, co-founders of Cato Networks: Kramer and Shatz founded Cato in 2015 with products designed to protect customer's WAN connections and mobile devices with capabilities, which have since matured into an architecture now known as secure access service edge (SASE). In 2022, Gartner recognized the vendor as one of nine “representative vendors” in the single-vendor SASE market. Cato this year announced that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) grew from $1 million to $100 million in five years, designating the SASE vendor a “centaur” shortly after it achieved unicorn status in 2020.
Gartner analyst Andrew Lerner called Cato “the most notable vendor from a software architecture perspective out there today,” adding “they have a very, very strong, unified software architecture and they were actually probably one of the first vendors doing SASE.” — Julia King, editorial assistant, SASE, SD-WAN
NetworkingVMware: VMware threw its weight behind the industry shift toward multicloud at the VMware Explore event this summer. The virtualization giant championed a vendor-agnostic approach to cloud cost management and Kubernetes with, for example, the Tanzu portfolio’s new compatibility with a Red Hat's popular OpenShift third-party Kubernetes orchestration platform. VMware prides itself on its open ecosystem strategy and support of the simplicity promised by vendor-agnostic principles, according to Tanzu SVP Edward Hieatt.
The company also stole headlines in 2022 with its pending and controversial sale to Broadcom for a whopping $69 billion. While VMware posted disappointing financial results for the third quarter of its 2023 fiscal year, it’s unlikely to matter much as the vendor remains betrothed to Broadcom. — Emma Chervek, reporter, cloud, open source, NaaS, SD-WAN, sustainability
DE&ICisco (Native American Networks ERG): From Cisco‘s approach to the talent gap to supporting historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), the equipment giant continues to expand its work in promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) in the tech and telecom sectors.
While the historically homogenous sectors have opened to the business-lead benefits of DE&I to address the talent gap, much of the work extends beyond the need for a talent pipeline. In fact, one of the company’s smaller employee resource groups (ERGs), the Native American Network (NAN), has gained significant momentum in recent years.
Open to Native and non-Native allies, NAN’s position is to raise awareness across the company on Native culture, tribal issues, and matters of social justice for key initiatives like land acknowledgement. The group opens up what Cisco calls “courageous conversations” that advocate for needed awareness and transparency around diversity in tech. — Tommy Clift, reporter, telecom, metaverse, blockchain, DE&I
TalentBosky Mukherjee, founder of PMDojo: PMDojo is an inclusivity-focused educational learning community for careers within product management, product design, UX research, and software development. Mukherjee has been in the tech industry for 22 years.
Currently more than 90% of fellowship participants at PMDojo successfully transition into a product role and receive a promotion. Mukherjee’s two decades within the industry illustrates overcoming patriarchal prejudice and tells an important reminder on burnout, the consequences of climbing the ladder to cope, and what being in a position of power now means to an immigrant mother who didn’t have the resources or access for help in her journey getting there. Read her story here. — Tommy Clift, reporter, telecom, metaverse, blockchain, DE&I
BlockchainHelium: Helium is a decentralized wireless network that allows low-power smart devices (miners) to send and receive data to the internet. The miners earn HNT tokens for providing network coverage and relaying data to the internet using hardware called a Hotspot.
Nova Labs signed an agreement with T-Mobile US to launch Helium Mobile, a decentralized coverage service building off of Helium’s distributed IoT network. It uses blockchain technology to more accurately verify connection shortcomings as the network is built out. The mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) will enable Helium Mobile users to access both T-Mobile US and local Helium 5G networks created by users. — Tommy Clift, reporter, telecom, metaverse, blockchain, DE&I
SustainabilityMicrosoft Senior Director of Sustainability Rosie Mastrandrea: Microsoft wasted no time backing a slew of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives this year – including continued support for its sustainability-focused industry cloud offering and a new environmental credit service aimed at improving the trust and transparency of these markets by building a managed service on the backend side.
Mastrandrea told SDxCentral “the backend is really being able to identify and work with project owners who want to be able to eventually sell their credits, and then also bring[ing] in the verifiers and the registries and have it all in one system,” she explained, referencing the current lack of transparency and prevalence of double- or triple-counting in today’s carbon credit markets.
Mastrandrea, whose background is in customer experience and product lifecycle marketing, said her personal passion for sustainability made her current role an easy choice when the opportunity arose. — Emma Chervek, reporter, cloud, open source, NaaS, SD-WAN, sustainability
5G/RANVerizon Business: Verizon Business' leadership shakeup set the division up for potential success in 5G and radio access network (RAN) product and services development. In July, Verizon Business named Sowmyanarayan Sampath as EVP and CEO of Verizon Business. Sampath replaced long-time Verizon Business leader Tami Erwin, who moved to be Strategic Advisor to Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg. Erwin’s new position is set to last until the end of the year, at which point she will be leaving the company. Sampath joined Verizon in 2014, having previously served as a partner and managing director at analyst firm Boston Consulting Group. His initial work was in the telecom giants’ business transformation efforts that resulted in the creation of its network transformation and OneFiber platforms.
Verizon Business then named Aparna Khurjekar as its new CRO of business markets and software-as-a-service (SaaS) with its Connect and BlueJeans operations. Khujekar previously served as president of Verizon Business Markets and has been with the carrier for more than 13 years. In addition, the company named Massimo Peselli as CRO for its global enterprise and public sector. Peselli previously served as SVP for global enterprise at the division. — Dan Meyer, executive editor, 5G, 6G, RAN, telecom
CloudEricsson: Ericsson shook up its leadership and reporting structure, merging its Business Area Digital Services and Business Area Managed Services operations into the newly formed Business Area Cloud Software operations. Per Narvinger, who is head of Ericsson’s Product Area Network group within the Business Area Networks division, will head up the newly formed division and also join Ericsson’s executive team. Narvinger will also replace Jan Karlsson, who is head of Ericsson’s Business Area Digital Services unit. Karlsson is leaving Ericsson’s executive team, but will report directly to CEO Börje Ekholm in driving development of the vendor’s Global Network Platform.
Ericsson also formed a new Business Area Enterprise Wireless Solutions division that will merge its current Cradlepoint business and Dedicated Networks operations. Cradlepoint CEO George Mulhern will head up the new division and also join Ericsson’s executive team. Outside of the division changes, Ericsson also announced that Arun Bansal, who was EVP and head of Market Area Europe and Latin America, left the company. The long-time Ericsson executive has been with the company for 27 years. — Dan Meyer, executive editor, 5G, 6G, RAN, telecom
Red Hat: Red Hat announced Paul Cormier moved from CEO into Red Hat’s chairman position where he will take on portfolio growth and leadership development at the open source vendor. Matt Hicks, who previously served as EVP of products and technologies, is moving into the CEO position. Both will continue reporting into IBM CEO Arvind Krishna. — Dan Meyer, executive editor, 5G, 6G, RAN, telecom
Open SourceVMware: VMware hired open source industry veteran Chip Childers to be its chief open source officer. In his new role, Childers is tasked with shepherding VMware’s ongoing involvement in open source projects, elevating awareness of VMware’s participation in that space, and helping to better integrate open source across the vendor. Childers came to VMware after a brief stint as chief architect at Puppet Labs, which was acquired in April by Perforce Software. More prominently, Childers spent nearly seven years at the Cloud Foundry Foundation, serving initially as CTO and later as executive director. — Dan Meyer, executive editor, 5G, 6G, RAN, telecom
Linux Foundation Europe: Linux Foundation Europe launched in September. Less than two months later it kicked off Project Sylva, which is designed to create a new, open source production-grade telco cloud stack.
Project Sylva’s common cloud software framework and adjacent reference implementation aims to reduce fragmentation of the cloud infrastructure layer for telecommunication and edge services. The project is supported by five European tier-one operators: Telefonica, Telecom Italia, Orange, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom; and two vendors: Ericsson and Nokia. The project plans to address challenges associated with telco and edge use cases within the European Union and globally. — Emma Chervek, reporter, cloud, open source, NaaS, SD-WAN, sustainability