Ray Smets

Ray Smets is Vice President and General Manager of Cisco’s Wireless Networking Business Unit, the largest business within its Wireless, Security & Routing Technology Group (WSRTG). He is responsible for technology and product development for Cisco’s industry-leading 802.11n wireless LAN access point products, controllers, and software for management and mobile services solutions.

Smets has a +20-year track record leading high-growth technology business teams in the IT telecom, networking and security industries.

Smets was a senior executive with several technology companies driving strategy, development, sales, business execution and transformation. Smets was the President/GM of the worldwide sniffer technology business at McAfee Security that was later spun off and ultimately acquired by NetScout, Inc. Smets was also Senior Vice President for Netopia, Inc., focused on building leading edge xDSL routers, gateways and remote management solutions. Later acquired by Motorola, Smets was Vice President of Broadband Solutions within Motorola’s Connected Home Solutions business where he directed the marketing, product management and partnership development for cable and telco broadband CPE, Femtocell and software businesses. Most recently, Smets led Packeteer’s worldwide sales, marketing and business development efforts in the WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration market through its successful sale to Blue Coat Systems.

Smets’ career began at BellSouth Corporation where he was a Cisco customer and served for over 15 years in executive roles heading up leading-edge subsidiaries and business units. In his more recent role, Smets was Vice President of Network Transformation which included leading the science and technology assessment labs, driving next generation network architecture, and the commercialization of the latest service provider solutions. Smets was also President of the BellSouth.net Internet Services subsidiary where he led the deployment of a large-scale IP infrastructure and grew the Internet Access business from a start-up to a top ten U.S. Internet service provider. During this time, a large Cisco-powered network was deployed, leading the network transformation to IP.

Smets also holds over 10 technology patents and speaks frequently at industry engagements worldwide.

Smets holds a B.S. degree in computer engineering from the University of Florida, an M.B.A. degree from Nova-Southeastern University, and is an alumnus of the Stanford University Executive Program.

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