Anil Valluri Bids Farewell to Palo Alto Networks

Anil Valluri, a veteran technology leader with over four decades of industry experience, has announced his departure from Palo Alto Networks, marking the close of one of the most transformative chapters of his career. Reflecting on his journey, Valluri described his tenure at Palo Alto Networks as among the most impactful, defined by technology relevance, rapid business scale, strong team building, and heightened brand leadership.

After distinguished leadership roles at DEC, Sun Microsystems, NetApp, and Google, Valluri joined Palo Alto Networks, expanding his professional portfolio into cybersecurity—one of the most critical and fast-growing sectors driven by digital, cloud, and AI adoption. Over his 4.5+ years with the company, he played a pivotal role in shaping its India growth story.

Leading Palo Alto Networks India from 2021 onward, Valluri scaled the business nearly fourfold, positioning the company as the largest pure-play cybersecurity player in India by market share. Under his leadership, Palo Alto Networks executed the largest-ever cybersecurity deal in India—and one of the largest globally—with a major private sector bank. The company also set new benchmarks across endpoint security, SOC, cloud security, and network security, while successfully evangelizing its platformization strategy across industries and geographies.

Before Palo Alto Networks, Valluri led Google Cloud in India, accelerating enterprise cloud adoption, and spent eight years at NetApp as President for India and SAARC, where he was instrumental in driving sustained business growth. His career spans leadership across sales, services, consulting, and product management.

A Stanford Graduate School of Business alumnus, Valluri is also known outside the boardroom as a single-digit golfer, analog audiophile, and passionate DIY enthusiast. One of the highlights of his Palo Alto Networks journey was working closely with CEO Nikesh Arora on key customer engagements in India, an experience he describes as both inspiring and enriching.

Expressing gratitude to customers, partners, and colleagues, Valluri termed his Palo Alto Networks journey “transformational” and indicated that he is now looking forward to his next set of professional adventures.