By AWE Staff
Manjula Talreja is a 25-year IT industry veteran who has spent the majority of her career at Cisco, where her extensive experience in general management, business strategy consulting and operations of large scale IT systems has helped guide Cisco business teams through many inflection points.
Manjula is currently Vice President of Global Cloud Business Development for Cisco, where she is playing a pivotal role in creating new business models and partnerships with technology vendors, Service Providers (SPs) and System Integrators (SIs) in the growing cloud market. In addition to her focus on key customers and partners, Manjula is taking an expanded role in helping shape the next phase of Cisco’s enterprise cloud strategy. Leveraging Cisco’s Internet of Everything (IoE) network of networks connected economy, Cisco believes that new cloud-based IoE platforms and exchanges will be created that will allow enterprises and CIOs to consume vertically tailored solutions delivered as a service. Manjula’s deep understanding of the cloud business and go to market models is being applied to tap into this next-generation cloud market opportunity.
In 2009, Manjula ran and launched the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition, a partnership between Cisco, EMC and VMware created to accelerate customers’ abilities to increase business agility with data center virtualization and private cloud. During her leadership, the Vblock™ Infrastructure Platforms – the jointly developed VCE solution – helped propel VCE to $10 million in business in just four months, along with a pipeline of $100 million in deals.
From 2004-2007, Manjula served as Senior Director of Customer Business Transformation with Cisco’s Voice Technology Group (VTG). During this time, Cisco expanded its networking footprint into new collaborative technologies such as IP Telephony (IPT), Unified Communications (UC) and video conferencing, generating a $1B run-rate in UC and acquiring WebEx. Manjula then went on to serve as VP of Strategy and Operations for the parent organization of VTG, the Software Group (SWG.)
In her early years at Cisco, Manjula played a pivotal role in two key transformations for the company: from an IT organization to an e-business leader, and from a provider of networking point-products to network-based business transformation solutions. Prior to Cisco, she spent five years with Hewlett Packard (HP) in their IT manufacturing organization, where she worked on Global Manufacturing Systems in the US, South East Asia and Europe.
Manjula is a highly sought-after industry thought-leader, and she was recently named to CableFAX Magazine’s ‘Most Powerful Women in Cable 2012’. She has spoken globally at such venues as: IDC’s Cloud Leadership Forum, Frost & Sullivan’s Growth, Innovation and Leadership (GIL) Conference, the UC Berkeley Haas Institute of Business Innovation (IBI), Women in Cable Technology (WICT), VoiceCon (now called Enterprise Connect) and EMC World. She is also a respected speaker within Cisco where she regularly presents at customer Executive Briefing sessions, Cisco Live, and C-Scape for analysts. Manjula is currently on the Advisory Board for the Frost & Sullivan GIL 2013 Conference and is also a member of the UC Berkeley Haas IBI Chief Innovation Officer leadership forum. She frequently advises start-ups and businesses in cloud, and non-government organizations (NGOs), both through board seats and consulting.
Manjula received her bachelor’s degrees in Economics and Information Systems from the University of Delhi; she also holds a bachelor’s degree in Business with a major in Information Systems from Santa Clara University.