IP Fabric is excited to welcome Miguel Pinto as our new VP of Product. With more than 20 years of experience across enterprise software, cybersecurity, and telecommunications, Miguel brings a strong track record of driving innovation and growth. Read on to learn more about Miguel’s career journey, and what he brings to IP Fabric.
Table of Contents
You’re coming to IP Fabric with over two decades of product management experience from Matrix42, BitSight, and beyond. What was it that drew you to the realm of network assurance?
Throughout my career, I was always drawn to products that solve problems that keep business leaders awake at night. Today, modern enterprises are facing a slew of infrastructure-related challenges that directly impact their bottom line, from security vulnerabilities to costly outages to compliance failures and beyond.
Network assurance tools represent a fundamental paradigm shift to tackling these issues. Instead of the reactive firefighting approach that has dominated networking for decades, solutions like IP Fabric enable an automated, verification-based model. This transformation is revolutionizing how organizations manage their increasingly complex hybrid multicloud environments.
What do you wish more enterprises knew about network assurance?
The business impact of network assurance couldn’t be more profound. Today, 80% of enterprises don’t have a complete view of how their network is behaving. In the event of a security breach, this lack of visibility can slow troubleshooting, root cause discovery, and mean time to resolution (MTTR), all of which can prolong downtime and drive up the cost of a breach. (Not to mention that for certain security frameworks like DORA and NIS2, you can be subject to fines if you don’t report within a certain time window.)
However, IP Fabric provides a complete digital twin of the network on demand. These time-based snapshots transform a previously opaque infrastructure into a transparent, understandable system, ensuring that IT leaders and their teams always have the most comprehensive insights about their network’s security posture and overall health. The proof? Here’s a quick look at some real customer results:
- Root cause investigation reduced from 48 hours to 1 hour
- MTTR reduced from 24 hours to 30 minutes
- Audit workload reduced from 30 days to 30 minutes
This is just one example of how network assurance platforms are helping organizations achieve stronger security, better stability, less downtime, and continuous compliance. After seeing IP Fabric in action, I knew network assurance was the next evolution in infrastructure management that I wanted to be part of.
What are the problems you’re hoping to help customers solve with IP Fabric?
Network assurance isn’t just another monitoring tool—it’s a strategic business enabler. Many IT leaders might experience critical roadblocks because they don’t have an end-to-end understanding of their network behavior, and, as a result, can’t assess the risks of network changes they want to make. This creates a fundamental paradox: IT leaders are expected to drive business innovation, yet they lack the confidence to evolve the infrastructure that underpins said business innovation.
Many organizations treat network opacity and uncertainty as an unavoidable reality, but IP Fabric’s automated network discovery is showing enterprises that there’s a dramatically better approach. In addition to taking automated snapshots of the network, IP Fabric also simulates network behavior both before and after changes are made. This foresight is a key strategy for improving business agility and accelerating digital initiatives—without compromising network security or reliability.
Ultimately, what excites me most about IP Fabric is that it helps customers to transform their networks from business constraints into competitive advantages. With a network assurance tool like IP Fabric in their stack, IT leaders can achieve the confidence they need to fulfill their roles as business enablers.
Can you tell us more about your approach to product management, and how you’ll implement it at IP Fabric?
Customers don’t simply buy a product; they hire the product to do a job for them. For example, a car can help people get from point A to point B, but when you look deeper, the function of a car can extend far beyond basic transportation. People purchase cars as status symbols to express their identity. They hire cars as personal spaces during commutes. They rely on cars to minimize hassle in urban environments, and to act as a family logistics center.
As a product manager, it’s vital to understand these deeper motivations so that you can explain complex purchasing decisions and explain why certain features resonate with certain customer segments.
My approach to product management is centered on operationalizing the understanding of what customers truly want to accomplish—not just what features they request. By focusing on outcome creation instead of feature delivery, we can ensure that our customers have the best possible product experience, and make the smartest decisions for their business.
As I ramp up at IP Fabric, I plan to implement this approach in three pillars.
- Empower product teams to specialize in customer jobs, and act with autonomy.
- Create space for genuine customer discovery, where all product team members are encouraged to experience the world from the customer’s point of view.
- Establish an “infinite game” mindset, focusing on sustainable improvements rather than short-term wins.
By anchoring our work in meaningful customer outcomes, we’re setting the foundation for a product strategy that not only adapts to change, but helps lead it.
Outside of work, you’re a father to three energetic little ones, and have a number of creative pursuits. How do those experiences influence your approach to product management?
There are many traits that come naturally to children that are also valuable for product managers. This includes curiosity and creativity—traits my kids display almost every waking hour—as well as perseverance and the ability to make even the most boring tasks fun. Nonetheless, what I enjoy most about my kids, and what I also apply to my job, is seeing the world through someone else’s eyes.
