bengaluru aruba networks founder keerti melkote is retiring from the company he started after a twodecade innings at the helm aruba was acquired by hewlett packard enterprise hpe for 27 billion in 2015 and melkote continued as president of the business unit melkote grew up in hyderabad and did engineering from the jawaharlal nehru technological university he then moved to the us to do a masters in electrical engineering at purdue university his first job was at intel after which he spent a couple of years each at cisco and nortel he founded aruba in 2001 it started from a small room and went on to redefine the enterprise networking space melkote led its strategy and operationsannouncing melkotes departure hpe ceo antonio neri in an investor call last week said i am tremendously pleased with arubas impressive performance and it is against this successful backdrop that i want to share that aruba founder keerti melkote has made the decision to retire from hpe we acquired aruba in 2015 when we saw the edge as the next frontier aruba and keerti have been instrumental in accelerating this business to the 3 billion business it is today im incredibly grateful for his leadership and i have personally benefited from his counsel knowledge and friendship melkote led aruba through its ipo in 2007 through hpes acquisition of the company and then brought together all hpes intelligent edge portfolio under the aruba divisionhe holds multiple patents in networking and communications and was honoured by purdue university as an outstanding electrical and computer engineer in 2009a purdue university note on melkote on its website says that melkote found a job in the universitys high energy nuclear physics lab where he helped researchers connect their computers to linear accelerators and other lab devices it was an improbable thing for an engineering student to do melkote is quoted as saying but thats where i learned the ropes the practical aspects of connecting networksto this day nearly 25 years later im still in the field of networking everything i learned at purdue i still apply he saidmelkote in his blog said arubas journey began 20 years back with his cofounder pankaj manglik we took our idea to dominic orr our mentor he believed in us helped us raise money for the venture and served as an executive board member from the beginning he wrotemelkote placed big bets on the future of networking and they saw wifi as a cornerstone technology the most common comment i get about aruba he said is its your baby you must be very proud and it is true aruba is my baby my second one in fact the first is my daughter who was barely 4 months old when i quit my job to start aruba the pride i experience for aruba is the same pride i experienced when my daughter accomplished her own milestones he wrotearuba started in a small room and he acknowledged his team for the milestones its seeing