Technology >> CEO Interviews >> May 11, 2000
SREEKANTH RAVI is President and CEO of SonicWALL, Inc., his second
Silicon Valley business success. Mr. Ravi founded Generation Systems, a
manufacturer of high-performance video products. Under his leadership as
CEO, the company reached an annual sales rate of $8 million by its
second year. Mr. Ravi sold Generation Systems to a publicly held
computer products company in 1990 and co-founded SonicWALL, formerly
known as Sonic Systems, Inc. SonicWALL began as a manufacturer of
Ethernet adapters for Macintosh computers. Under Mr. Ravi's leadership,
the company introduced over 30 unique technologies and shipped more than
1.5 million products to customers worldwide. As Mr. Ravi was developing
his IT structure, he observed that the industry had no affordable
security devices for the small to midsize enterprise. Seeing a unique
opportunity, he guided his company into the emerging security device
market and introduced the first SonicWALL security appliances. The new
line of security appliances was successfully introduced to the market.
In 1999, Mr. Ravi and investors took the company public six months
earlier than planned. The IPO raised more the $65 million. One week
following the IPO, Wall Street valued SonicWALL at over $1 billion. Mr.
Ravi and his team followed this successful venture by executing a
secondary public offering in March 2000, which raised an additional $350
million. Mr. Ravi holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical
Engineering from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Profile
the stage for readers.
Mr. Ravi: SonicWALL is a provider of Internet security appliances
targeted specifically at small to
