Technology >> CEO Interviews >> May 4, 2001

Sreekanth Ravi – Sonicwall Inc (snwl)

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
TWST: Can you provide our readers with a brief overview of SonicWALL,

Incorporated?

Mr. Ravi: SonicWALL is a provider of Internet security solutions for

small to medium size businesses, as