Executive Profile - Bob Shaw is the President and CEO of Net Optics. Since March of 2001, Bob has been implementing the company vision and strategy, motivating the executive team to stay focused on helping Net Optics customers win in their markets. Under his leadership, Net Optics has achieved consistent double-digit growth, launching more than 25 new products, acquiring over 700 new customers, and expanding Net Optics' global presence.
Bob brings both Fortune 200 management and start-up experience to Net Optics. Prior to joining Net Optics, Bob Shaw was Sr. Vice President of Sales for Noosh, a market leader in collaborative enterprise communication for the Fortune 500. In addition, Bob has held Senior Vice President leadership positions within sales, marketing, and operations for the $1 billion business unit at RR Donnelley & Sons Company. During his years at Donnelley, he also served as a general manager at one of their state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, where he guided 300 employees to reach new performance benchmarks for the company. Bob holds both a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business and a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from Geneva College in Pennsylvania.
Q: Bob, thank you for spending time with me today and for being the first CEO to be interviewed for LoveMyTool’s “Executive Corner.” I have been looking forward to this opportunity to speak with you and learn more about your thoughts regarding the test access space. First of all, tell our readers a little about Net Optics, your history, your products, and your customers.
A: Thank you, Denny. First I want to say that I really respect the educational approach you’ve taken with your portal. It’s a great asset for the industry, which Net Optics has been part of for 12 years now. More than 6,000 customers have deployed Net Optics products, and continue to do so. With a “Customer First!” attitude, our mission is helping network and security professionals manage the health and integrity of their networks more efficiently. We do this by providing products that enable them to “Tap into the Network” for 100 percent visibility of the network traffic, using the monitoring, security, and forensics tools of their choice. The simple fiber and copper test access points, or Taps, that we started with have evolved into a complete family of passive access products that extend from the network’s edge to its core. It has been fun building this market space from something that really didn’t exist at all into a successful and growing business.
Q: People use the phrase “co-petition” to describe companies that compete and collaborate at the same time. What are your thoughts regarding the other companies in the test access space?
A: The companies we’ve worked with most closely over the years as “co-petitors” are the switch vendors, because customers sometimes Tap into the Network using a switch’s Span or Mirror port instead of one of our products. However, this co-petition actually led us to a number of innovations that we call our Span Taps. These Taps enhance the usefulness of Span ports through aggregation, regeneration, and matrix switching, enabling network professionals to use their Span port monitoring tools in a much more efficient manner. In fact, we talk more about co-education than co-petition, because we think everybody wins when the customer clearly understands what the best solutions are for particular applications, whether those solutions are based on Span Ports or In-Line Taps. Today, we are pleased to say that major switch manufacturers regularly recommend our products as part of their customers’ enterprise deployments.
Q: Interesting. So, how do you see the landscape emerging? Others have started with a switch and added some Tap functionality, but it sounds like you’re looking out even further.
A: That’s true, Denny. Of course, we always need to keep ahead of changes in network topologies; for instance, the emergence of 10 Gigabit deployments and new monitoring tools. In addition, customers are looking for products that help them filter the amount of traffic they’re capturing. They also want new products that expand their visibility, and proactively act on policies they define–broad solutions that streamline the management and discovery process. Over the last two years, we invented the intelligent Taps or iTaps in both copper and fiber versions. We also introduced an entire range of 10 GigaBit devices including iBypass Switches, Regeneration Taps, LX4 Taps, and Converter Taps. Our focus right now is on faster, more intelligent, and smaller form-factor products. We are fortunate to have excellent support from our customer and partner communities, including the market-leading telco and financial organizations.
Q: Thanks, Bob. It sounds like Net Optics is working on quite a few interesting new solutions. What do you feel is your biggest opportunity?
A: The Tap market has plenty of growth potential. It’s all about educating customers on the value of installing access ports when they can get the greatest leverage from their investment, and that is before a network issue occurs. We’ve put together a Monitoring Access Platform, or MAP, that we were rolling out at RSA in April. The MAP helps people identify where and how they can use Taps to get better visibility and control of the network traffic that directly affects their businesses. We hope to see and meet everyone interested in seeing our new products at RSA in San Francisco and Interop in Las Vegas. We’re using all the multi-media technologies and channels we can to spread the message about the importance of monitoring and monitoring access solutions, which is why I’m happy to do this interview with you today. Denny, we’d also like to provide the LoveMyTool community access to several short educational videos that we’re just now putting the final touches on, so we’ll be sure to post them here when they’re ready in a few weeks. So let me thank you for this opportunity to reach out to your LoveMyTool audience, and let them know they can look forward to seeing more of Net Optics here in the future.
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