While growing up in India, Kumar Malavalli dreamed of coming to America. He finally arrived in Silicon Valley from Canada in 1995 to co-found Brocade Communications Systems. As CTO, he helped make Brocade one of the most technologically innovative and successful companies today.
Kumar Malavalli earned BS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Physics at the National Institute of Engineering in Mysore, India. He has worked for ITT Communications, Amdahl, Canstar, and HP in various senior technical positions pertaining to local and wide area networks. He is one of the principal architects of Fibre Channel technology, in which he holds patents. He became Chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) T11 Technical Committee, which established universal standards for Fibre Channel, and was a director of both the Fibre Channel Industry Association and the Storage Networking Industry Association.
The benefits of Fibre Channel’s technology became apparent after September 11 when, for the first time, World Trade Center companies were able to rely on the data disaster recovery features of their storage systems. Mr. Malavalli’s contributions to storage networking range from the technical to business development to marketing. Through his leadership in the industry many new companies were launched in Silicon Valley, and new departments opened up within established corporations.
Mr. Malavalli currently invests in and mentors numerous storage networking startups in Silicon Valley, and serves on the Board of Directors or Technical Advisory Board of over ten such companies. He is co-founder and partner of Pulsar Ventures, a venture fund that transfers breakthrough technologies “often in biotechnology or medicine” out of the universities and into the business world. He also has a global vision that encompasses telemedicine and education. He is a Silicon Valley Charter Member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), and Trustee of the American India Foundation (AIF).
