Prior to Ocarina, Rao was the CTO of the Advanced Solutions Group (ASG) for Citrix Systems. Citrix ASG provided solutions for Secure Remote Access, IP Telephony Applications, Business Continuity and Mobile Solutions. Rao provided technology and product leadership to Citrix Systems on identifying new market opportunities.

Rao was the CTO of Net 6 and joined Citrix via the acquisition. While at Citrix, Rao was the developer of the Hybrid VPN, the first of its kind to provide application access from any PC with support for real-time applications such as VoIP. Using cutting edge SSL over IP techniques, Rao architected a channel ready product that worked seamlessly for all applications with superior application performance and geographical high availability.

Prior to joining Net6, Rao was an open source Linux kernel developer AND a key Operating Systems Architect at Intel where he worked on the IA-64 project. At Intel, Rao worked on various UNIX kernels, and in particular designed and implemented some key components of Linux’s Intel 64-bit architecture. He was also a key architect for Lockheed Martin’s distribution and optimization network for low-bandwidth radio-based networks, as utilized by the U.S. defense industry.

Rao holds an MS Computer Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania and a BE from Bangalore University, in both cases earning high distinction. He has authored numerous patents, as well as publishing articles on such subjects as business continuity, secure remote access, and distributed fault tolerant architectures.