Shehzad Merchant serves as Chief Technology Officer of Gigamon bringing over 20 years of experience in the high-tech industry. Prior to joining Gigamon, Shehzad served as the CTO at Extreme Networks, and is the author of several networking and communications patents. He is a frequent speaker at various industry events including Interop and Open Networking Summit, and has been engaged with many standards bodies including the IEEE, IETF and ONF. Prior to Extreme Networks, he was the co-founder and VP of Products at Polytime Systems, following on from various senior architectural and research roles at Allied Telesyn, Nevis Networks and SRI. Shehzad holds a Masters Degree in Computer Engineering from USC and an Electronic Engineering degree from the University of Mumbai.