 It's the cube Here is your host Jeff Frick. Hi Jeff Rick here with the Cube We're in Santa Clara, California on the ground at Ixia's Office a new office at the re-modeling a lot of exciting stuff going on and we're really excited to be joined by Bethany Mayer CEO and President of Ixia welcome. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining me here at the office Absolutely, so you've been on the Cube a ton of times your big Cube favorite Women in tech so now you've got a new adventure. So tell us a little bit about Ixia and what's going on here, right? So, yes, I recently joined Ixia CEO Wonderful company has a great heritage and really strong IP Has always been ahead of the technology trends because of what we do and really the focus here at Ixia is on driving Application performance for our customers as also security resilience for our customers So two very key things that we provide validation for and optimization And I know you're super technical dig down a little bit deeper and talk about some of the secret sauce or the ways That you're helping customers achieve that. Sure. So we have three big customer segments. We Sell to the network equipment manufacturers. We sell to carriers and we sell to enterprises and we have a very very strong Presence in the in the network equipment providers In fact we're number one in that space and what we do which is primarily testing their devices and Validating the devices that they build so whether it's you know one gig ten gig twenty five gig forty gig a hundred gig All of those things have to be tested and our products provide that with the carriers We have we have virtualized our products so that we can help them when they virtualize their networks We're there to validate those networks and test those virtual network functions So they perform as well and we also provide security resilience in that we can test for Architectures that could possibly be breached by unknown attacks and then finally in the enterprise We can also validate the design of their networks so test that and we can monitor and Secure the performance of their network so we offer a lot a lot So you a self-prescribed woman of the valley beyond just being a woman in tech We're talking a little bit off-camera. So you've been at this tech thing a long time I wonder if you can give some perspective on on really some of these these trends that are really taking hold and kind of a Critical mass of Moore's law all over the place in open source and virtualization and as virtualization has moved from Compute to store to network right and give kind of your perspective on how this changing the world and how it's still Really crazy and exciting place to be it is really exciting actually I gave a talk yesterday on disruption and what's going on and there are lots of disruptors open source and The and what it creates in terms of changes in business model is a huge disruptor Because people are not only utilizing it to build products internally. They're building businesses on it So they're curating open source and they're using it to build products, which is really cool So that business model is beginning to to morph also Virtualization is huge. I mean everything is virtualized except the network Which finally is getting virtualized and that's going to have a huge change and has had already a huge impact on the network Manufacturers equipment manufacturers as well as all of the customers out there who are making that change Whether it's enterprise with SDN or whether it's carriers with network function virtualization Everyone wants to utilize the benefits of virtualization And the other big disruptor is internet of things so we do a lot of device testing So that's not just not routers and switches. That's handheld devices right and that's also Ethernet in cars and so there's a huge trend towards internet of things and all of that will have to be validated and tested Which is exciting for us, but it's also, you know really exciting for what that will bring to the valley in terms of new technologies It's it's crazy. We were at this little show location and and in context world a couple weeks ago And it was interesting zebra technology and old RFID barcode reader is now getting new life and new applications And leveraging internet of things and sensors and RFID tags and new applications specifically are talking about sports and tracking people And so it's a pretty it's pretty crazy time both with new technology as well as using old technology in new ways So let's talk about how you got into this thing you you were a polysine major And then you went into Lockheed and something happened in there How did you switch from being a polysine major to being a networking guru? So some of it is job experience. I have to say So Lockheed was a really interesting place where I became a project manager for classified products one of the classified products I happened to work on was the F1 17 a stealth fighter and I managed the Radar absorbing material on the windows of of that product and others like it And that was really exciting and really turned me on to wow technology is cool and interesting and exciting And I want to do more around this area And so I left there through a friend always through a friend someone went somewhere and And headed to Apple where again the technology was so exciting. I participated in the early phases of the laptop Industry in that we were building power books and I was involved in the power book Manufacturing and then moved at Cisco, which what my parents thought was a food company Cisco with an ass as opposed to the sea Was the company that I happened to go to and that in its Cisco I I got more training so I actually was trained and I did The courses that you take for being certified in a Cisco as a Cisco network admin I did not take all of them. I'm not a certified CCIE Let me be clear, but I need to take several of them and I began to actually help design and build product Which was very exciting for me, and then I just continued on there I think networking is very exciting always have but also the technology World is really cool, and I've learned a lot and just enjoy it tremendously So it's been a good career been a good ride So you're a big proponent of women in tech. You've won a ton of awards. You speak a lot Not only are there not a lot of women in technology traditionally, but they're probably even fewer in defense So how did you find you know being able to be accepted and make some traction and gain some ground in that world? you know I think that to some degree not to not completely but to some degree technology has a meritocracy to it so people do notice if you perform well and So I've been fortunate that the people that I've worked for have noticed that and have helped me progress in my career And then the other thing I would say is You know if a woman feels like they're not progressing they need to make a decision about you know Should I stay at this company? Should I go somewhere else to make my progression? Is there any concern about bias and if so maybe there's another place for them So I think you have to think carefully about the environment you're in what you're doing How you're performing because hard work absolutely is key key component of it and and all those things together can combine for good Decision-making about your career You're saying too that you really need to manage the process yourself You have to take ownership of it and if it's not working out then you got to go find something different I consider myself a free agent so I Guide my course myself and that's how I've always done it and it's actually has been a good thing for me And then talk a bit a little bit about the role of mentorship too because mentorship is very Very important both as specifically as having a mentor to look up to and kind of look out for you But also in terms of a mentorship role for people to look up to you know I wonder if you can speak to some of your mentors of people that looked out for you or you looked up to and Or some of the things that you're doing back the other direction now that you're CEO and president sure So I have had several mentors both men and women I would say fairly early in my career. I met a really extraordinary woman Judy Estrin Who is the former CTO of Cisco and also a serial entrepreneur? And I've been very fortunate. I actually worked in one of the companies that she created I also just became more a friend of hers And she has helped tremendously in terms of my understanding of the technology industry and just giving me advice on what to do And what my next step might be But she's a huge inspiration to I mean, this is a woman who's founded I want to say five maybe six companies at the last one she sold to Yahoo Tremendous technologists. So she was a great inspiration for me and a very good mentor And then at HP I had an excellent I would say mentor and sponsor which was Dave Donatelli so I worked for Dave Donatelli for four years at HP and He was the individual who both put me in the role of running all of marketing for the enterprise Division, but also put me in the role of the HP networking General manager and that was a big jump for for him and You know luckily I succeeded 12 consecutive quarters of growth, which is great But he had to make that decision. So I have much He's a wonderful person that way He makes choices around performance and accountability and I really appreciated that. That's great When Dave's another great Cube alumni and we actually we just saw him last night at an event in San Francisco So he's he's he's still around and we're kind of waiting for him to land somewhere So so final final thing before we go. So again, you're very active in in the women in tech and the girls in STEM I wonder if there's any particular organizations that you'd like to highlight For either young girls women family that they should maybe get involved with or with or consider getting involved with To help them out. Absolutely. So when I was at HP We founded the Women's Innovation Council, which was a group of a lot of women CIOs, which again are rare breed But there are several out there and brilliant women And we all started to look at how to help girls come up through technology One of the groups that we have worked with is called girls who code And also girl geeks all great organizations that help girls starting in elementary school Learn about technology and math and how exciting and important it is and to really think about a career in technology So we have worked with those. I've worked with them wonderful organizations would highly recommend them. Awesome So Bethany, thanks for taking a few minutes. I'll do your busy day getting this your new position going with XE exciting times I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching the Cube. We're live in Santa Clara on the ground at XEA. Thanks for watching