Aryaka Bolsters IPO Ambitions With New Sales Leader

Aryaka backed up its goal of going public by hiring a man who has already helped lead a company to an initial public offering (IPO).

Mike Hoffman, Aryaka

Mike Hoffman has been working with Aryaka since November as its chief revenue officer and senior vice president of global sales. His new company says his appointment is an important step in the company pressing on toward an IPO.

“We are excited to have Mike join our executive leadership team and continue our momentum in disrupting the industry landscape,” said Shawn Farshchi, president and CEO of Aryaka. “Mike has been building successful, goal-oriented sales teams with a channel focus for more than 30 years. His experience in growing a company from a private startup through a successful IPO will be extremely valuable during this next stage of expansion for Aryaka.”

Hoffman was vice president of worldwide sales for Gigamon when it filed for an IPO in 2013. He’s credited for growing revenue from $20 million to $140 million over the course of six years. He most recently worked for software-defined networking provider Big Switch Networks as chief revenue officer.

“I’m thrilled to join the market leader in the global SD-WAN space,” Hoffman said. “Aryaka’s global SD-WAN is the perfect fit for any international organization looking for an alternative to legacy connectivity technologies, and wanting to accelerate application performance around the world by establishing a network superhighway to cloud and SaaS providers.”

Many analysts consider it inevitable that one or more SD-WAN companies will go public in the upcoming year. Futuriom forecasted earlier this year that Aryaka — along with Cisco-Viptela, Cradlepoint, FatPipe Networks and Silver Peak — is likely to go public in 2018.

Gary Sevounts, Aryaka’s chief marketing officer, spoke to Channel Partners two weeks ago and predicted more consolidation in the SD-WAN industry. Aryaka says it has more than 700 deployments of its global SD-WAN offering.