David Hughes

David Hughes leads the HPE Aruba Networking product management and CTO organizations and is responsible for driving product portfolio and vision. He joined in September 2020 when HPE acquired SD-WAN pioneer Silver Peak Systems. David founded Silver Peak Systems in 2004 after a year as Entrepreneur in Residence at Benchmark Capital. For the first 9 years David drove innovation as CTO, and then from 2013, as CEO, he led Silver Peak beyond WAN optimization to become a leader in the emerging SD-WAN and WAN edge infrastructure markets.

Prior to Silver Peak, David was a vice president and general manager at BlueLeaf Networks, where his team developed a unique network switching and transmission system. From 1996 to 2000, he 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, David was a key engineering contributor at StrataCom, an early pioneer in frame relay and ATM, which was acquired by Cisco in 1996. Before StrataCom, he worked as an engineer for BNR Japan/Northern Telecom Japan Inc.

David has been awarded more than 100 patents in areas that include data acceleration, routing and packet switching, control and scheduling algorithms. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Wollongong University, Australia, and a BE in Electrical Engineering from Auckland University, New Zealand.