Ihab Tarazi

Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Packet

Ihab Tarazi began his career by earning a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications from the University of Maryland and a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management from Southern Methodist University. Soon after, he joined MCI Communications where he held positions of increasing project management and leadership responsibilities including as Director/Manager of Network Planning & Engineering. In 2002 Ihab was promoted to Vice President of Global Network Planning, leading enterprise network planning and implementation for the Global Access, Voice, IP, Optical, and submarine cable networks, negotiating contracts with the US and global carriers to deliver the most competitive products and developing enterprise customer network designs in response to multi-million-dollar bids.

Upon MCI acquisition by Verizon in 2006, Ihab moved on to serve as VP of Global Engineering & Technology and later as VP of Global Enterprise Network Services. During his tenure at Verizon, Ihab provided decisive leadership to more than 2000 Engineering, Product Development and Operations professionals in 60 countries across the Americas, Asia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and Africa, delivering ground-breaking network technologies. His leadership was instrumental in deploying the first 100G backbone, first submarine cable to China and advancing IP protocol innovations. He also spearheaded delivery of best fiber to the home consumer products with highest speeds and best video streaming quality in the FiOS industry. Managing $8B in Opex and $1B in Capex, and negotiating hundreds of agreements with equipment and network service providers, he successfully expanded the global IP/MPLS service to 160 countries including challenging emerging markets.

In 2013, Ihab’s career took another leap forward to become the CTO of Equinix, leading Equinix International Business Exchange engineering, operations, platform strategy as well as the next generation technology and innovation functions.  As a pivotal contributor to company cloud initiatives, Ihab developed the industry leading Cloud Exchange Platform leveraging SDN technology to provide API driven automated multi-cloud and multi-network private interconnection at Equinix Data Centers globally. He also worked closely with leading Enterprise cloud platforms to provide fully integrated hybrid cloud solutions for Enterprise customers.  As a champion for technology incubation initiatives for Equinix, he was instrumental in cultivating strategic technology engagements with leading platforms such as Facebook and Google, as well as emerging innovative players across Security, Storage, Edge Evolution and IoT. 

Throughout it all, Ihab has gained global recognition as a leader in technology innovation and catalyst of strategic partnerships for Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, Data Center Interconnection, Cloud Networking and Edge Evolution. He serves as a Member of the Board for NeoPhotonics Corporation since 2014, contributing to product roadmap and alignment of technology strategy with overall company business strategy. Recognized as an expert in Submarine Cables, he previously served on the boards of Southern Cross and Australia-Japan Submarine Cable Systems, facilitating development of dozens of technology projects and new Data Center Architecture. He also led Data Center and networking industry transformation for Cloud Architecture as a member of Telecom Infrastructure Project and Co-Chair of the Open Optical Packet Transport, and shared his broad technical expertise as the Chairman of the Metro Ethernet Forum.