Product Manager and entrepreneur Prasanna Naik has worked with some of the most prominent tech companies around, including Cisco, Oracle, and Airbnb, before striking out on his own to co-found CloudEagle, an SaaS buying and optimization company that reduces companies’ software spending.
Beyond his work with CloudEagle, Naik is in fact the youngest PM to launch IPv6 on the public cloud, which he accomplished while working with Oracle. The launch led to lucrative deals with major organizations and agencies.
As an entrepreneur, Naik is finding ways to help companies work smarter, allowing them to dedicate limited resources to the most impactful areas, rather than letting their spending splinter.
We had the chance to sit down with Naik and talk about some of the biggest moments of his career so far, including that IPv6 launch we mentioned earlier.
Thank you for talking with us today. First, how does it feel to be the youngest PM to launch IPv6 in the public cloud?
It feels great, especially hearing from folks who had previously launched IPv6 at AWS and Microsoft Azure that I’m the youngest PM to have launched IPv6 on the public cloud while I was at Oracle Cloud.
When you are working on a product with tight deadlines and high stakes in a fast-moving environment, you don’t have time to think about anything other than the delivery of the product. Launching a complex network like IPv6 in a public cloud itself is an achievement I am proud of, and getting to know that I was the youngest PM to do it was just the cherry on the cake.
Were there any unforeseen difficulties in the run-up to this launch?
There were a lot of challenges since we had to implement IPv6 across multiple layers and network elements. Imagine you’ve only been using an IPv4 address like 192.168.1.1 until now and now it has to also support IPv6, which has its own set of rules. The main challenge was aligning multiple teams to deliver their piece of IPv6 at the same time.
The physical hardware network layer, virtualization layer, compute instance, load balancer, and storage team – all of them had to implement IPv6 and we had to get it working with the existing IPv4. This was a complex project with requirements spread across ten different teams and several months.
Can you tell us about some of the benefits of this IPv6 launch for Oracle?
Launching IPv6 on Oracle Cloud unlocked multi-million-dollar contracts from the Department of Defense and Federal government customers for whom IPv6 was a mandatory requirement.
You also co-founded CloudEagle. Where did the concept for this company start?
CloudEagle helps companies save on their wasted software spending. Throughout my career, at Cisco, Riverbed, Oracle, and Airbnb, I had seen multiple instances where software licenses were bought in bulk but many of the licenses would never end up being used.
The team would sign up for a one-month free trial and finish the trial but forget to turn off the payments. This resulted in a six-figure loss. My co-founder Nidhi Jain had seen similar problems too, and this is where the concept of CloudEagle came up.
What kinds of results have you been able to achieve for CloudEagle clients so far?
Especially in these recessionary environments, we have been able to save customers $40,000 within just one month of engagement. With a couple of customers, we have saved them upward of $500,000 savings. This has immensely helped companies get money back from wasted and unused software licenses. Now they can extend their companies’ runway, not make headcount cuts, and instead reinvest in technology and software that’s growing their revenue.
Do you currently have any plans to expand CloudEagle’s services or scope?
CloudEagle plans to be an all-in-one platform for everything related to SaaS applications in the company, right from getting visibility into these apps to managing the apps and users. We started with a visibility platform that can show all the applications in the company and their usage and also respective spending. We expanded to build an optimization platform where our platform provides recommendations on how companies can identify and optimize SaaS spending.
Next, we will launch CloudEagle’s workflow. This will streamline buying and renewals. Our workflows will be customizable so that they can be used not just for SaaS purchase and renewal approvals but also for any type of approval workflows, for example, laptop or chair procurements, or other compliance approvals required by the team.
Are you currently working on any additional entrepreneurial ventures?
No, finally I am at a stage where I’m not chasing the next big thing. Instead, I’m actually building the next big thing!