ONI Systems And The Power Of An Idea Date:   Sunday , October 01, 2000 As his graduate studies came to an end, ONI Systems founder Rohit Sharma got two job offers from Nortel Networks. He chose, instead, to gravitate to the fast-paced world of Silicon Valley. Sharma relates, “I didn’t think that going to a big company would allow me to do the kind of things I wanted to do. The stuff I was doing in my daily life-on the Net, on the Web-just didn’t seem to connect with what Nortel, as a company, was doing.”