As a Sr Director of Architecture and Strategy for Telecom, Media and Entertainment segment of Red Hat,  Azhar Sayeed works with customers and partners worldwide to define new architectures and develop reference patterns, deployment models and strategies for Cloud and Virtualization. 

Azhar is an active contributor in open source communities such as LFN and Magma, where he is a board member;  xGVela, where he is a key contributor to the overall plan and architecture; and Anuket, where he has contributed to Cloud Native 5G reference patterns. Some of his past work includes industry’s first cloud native 5G demonstration at Kubecon, Virtual Central Office initiative by OPNFV (Now called Anuket) to build new cost effective way to deliver Residential, Business and Mobile services 

Azhar has more than 30 years of experience in the Networking, Telecommunications and the Software industry. Prior to Red Hat Azhar, is a 17 year veteran of Cisco Systems where he ran many teams and projects from Software Product Management to Engineering and solutions development. 

He has 9 Patents and is also an author of a book – "MPLS and Next-Generation Networks: Foundations for NGN and Enterprise Virtualization" .