David Hughes

Founder & CEO, Silver Peak Systems — David Hughes founded Silver Peak Systems in 2004 after serving a year as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Benchmark Capital. Through 2013 Hughes drove innovation serving as CTO, and then more recently as CEO, leading Silver Peak beyond WAN optimization into the emerging SD-WAN market. Prior to Silver Peak, Hughes served as vice president and general manager at BlueLeaf Networks (2000-2002), where his team developed a unique network switching and transmission system. From 1996 to 2000, Hughes held several positions at Cisco Systems, including director of system architecture for the BPX and MGX product lines, and senior director of product management for the Multi-Service Switching Business Unit. Earlier, Hughes was a key engineering contributor at StrataCom, an early pioneer in frame relay and ATM, which was acquired by Cisco in 1996. Before StrataCom, David worked as an engineer for BNR Japan/Northern Telecom Japan Inc. Hughes has been awarded more than 50 patents in areas including data acceleration, routing and packet switching, control and scheduling algorithms. Hughes earned his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Wollongong University, Australia, and holds a BE in Electrical Engineering from Auckland University, New Zealand.