NetApp has recruited Zscaler CTO Syam Nair to be its new chief product officer, replacing the departing Harvinder Bhela.
Bhela joined NetApp in January 2022 as EVP and CPO and led product management, engineering, hardware, design, data science, operations, and product marketing, after spending 25 years at Microsoft. His LinkedIn profile says he is “in mindful hibernation,” while comments on his departure post suggest he may be pursuing another opportunity.
CEO George Kurian stated: “I am thrilled to welcome Syam to NetApp’s leadership team. He joins us at a time when our customers are looking to NetApp to help them deliver data-enabled growth and productivity: not only must they innovate to stay ahead, but they must also simplify to improve productivity and agility. This is a balance Syam has mastered throughout his career. Syam’s proven track record – from building planet-scale Azure data services at Microsoft to spearheading hyper-scale platforms like Salesforce Data Cloud – is exactly what we need as we sharpen our focus on high-growth markets.”
Nair is a former executive at Salesforce, Microsoft, and Zscaler with a track record of scaling major cloud platforms and pioneering next-gen AI-powered products. He joined Zscaler in May 2023 as CTO and EVP for R&D, moving from Salesforce. While at Zscaler, he led efforts to integrate AI and ML into its offerings and drove the expansion of its Zero Trust Exchange platform, scaling it to handle over 300 billion daily transactions, reinforcing Zscaler’s position as the world’s largest in-line cloud security platform.
At Salesforce, he was EVP and head of product engineering and technology for Tableau, Customer Data Cloud (Genie – a hyperscale CRM data cloud), AI (Einstein), Automation (Flow), and Salesforce Marketing Cloud. He managed a globally distributed engineering team and cloud infrastructure. Nair and his execs were also responsible for the vision and execution of Salesforce’s next-gen AI search and analytics platform and experiences. At Microsoft, he was part of the leadership team responsible for building and accelerating the expansion of the globally distributed Azure data services.
Nair will help NetApp sharpens its focus on hybrid cloud and AI. The company is developing a new version of ONTAP for the AI era, and reckons AI inferencing and RAG use cases in the enterprise will be a larger and longer-lived market than model training. NetApp also has a strong focus on developing its cloud-native file offerings in the AWS, Azure, and Google clouds.
William Blair analyst Jason Ader has hosted investor meetings with NetApp CFO Wissam Jabre and tells subscribers: “NetApp has been plagued by choppy revenue performance over the past five years (two up years, three down years), with investors looking for clues to gain conviction on future consistency. Going forward, the company’s revenue growth algorithm to achieve its revenue CAGR target (from fiscal 2025-2027) of mid to high single digits is based on a mix shift to higher growth opportunities, including AFAs, public cloud services, block-optimized storage products, and AI. The company is off to a good start here, with revenue growth of 5 percent in fiscal 2025, and guidance of 4 percent growth (excluding the Spot divestiture) in fiscal 2026.”
Nair said: “I’ve spent my career tackling complex technological challenges and leading teams through transformations for hyper-growth. I’m thrilled to bring that experience to NetApp. We will set a bold vision for the future of hybrid cloud data services and execute with a growth mindset and relentless focus on customer success.”
