Surya Panditi is Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Service Provider Networking Group at Cisco. He is responsible for the strategy, engineering, and marketing direction of Cisco's comprehensive family of service provider networking platforms, including core/edge/access routing, optical, and mobility. He manages strategic architectural convergence and alignment of innovative technologies across market segments to leverage investments in hardware, ASICs, and software to ensure that Cisco products meet customer needs.

Panditi joined Cisco in 2005 and has served as Vice President and General Manager for a variety of Cisco engineering organizations. These include the Core Technology Group, the Service Provider Routing Technology Group, as well as the Access and Transport Technology Group, which included Cisco's portfolio of optical products, cable modem termination systems, quadrature amplitude modulation, and access transmission business units. His responsibilities included profit and loss, overall strategy, product development and positioning, and the introduction of leading-edge technologies and competitive products.

With more than 25 years of senior leadership experience with several public and private data and telecommunications equipment provider companies, Panditi brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to Cisco. He served as President and CEO of Polaris Networks, a provider of optical transport switches. He also held the CEO position for Convergent Networks Inc., a provider of broadband voice infrastructure products for cable and telecom service providers. Panditi also served as Chairman, President, and CEO of Avici Systems Inc., where he successfully managed the company's growth and transition from a private to a public company. Earlier in his career, Panditi was Vice President and General Manager of the local area network infrastructure business unit at USRobotics, and he also worked for Intel Corporation, Ungermann-Bass, and Telco Systems.

Panditi has served on the boards of enKoo, a developer of remote access products now part of SonicWALL; Internet Photonics, a company acquired by Ciena Corporation in 2004; and Avici Systems.

Panditi holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.