UPDATED: Overture names Ciena veteran Mike Aquino as new President, CEO

Overture Networks has taken another step forward with its growth strategy by announcing on Monday that it has appointed telecom veteran Mike Aquino as their new President and CEO.

Aquino has been tapped to help guide the company through what Overture says is "its next phase of customer and revenue growth worldwide."

Jeff Reedy, Overture's co-founder and current CEO, will continue to work at the company as its new Chief Strategy Officer.

A 30-year telecom veteran, Aquino is probably best known for his tenure at Ciena (Nasdaq: CIEN), where he served in three key roles: Senior VP of Global Field Operations, General Manager of Global Government Solutions and VP of Americas. He came to Ciena when the company purchased the former ONI Systems.

One of the key skills that Aquino was able to hone during his days at Ciena was his ability to help integrate various acquisitions, including World Wide Packets and Nortel's Metro Ethernet Networks business. Following a short bidding war with Nokia Siemens Networks in 2009, the acquisition of Nortel's MEF business gained the Canadian company's key coherent optical technology.

"I see this as a move for next stage of growth from startup/private company that is likely in the $75-$85m yearly run rate in 2012, with heavy emphasis in North America to a larger worldwide company that will grow to over $100M and be ripe for acquisition or maybe even IPO if the market gods find a kind period," said Michael Howard, co-founder and Principal Analyst, Carrier Networks
Infonetics Research, in an e-mail to FierceTelecom. "Mike has great credentials in his acquisition/assimilation of WWP and Nortel MEN at Ciena, both major efforts giving some real world experience hard to duplicate except at Cisco."

Howard added that Aquino's "strongest credential is working under Ciena's CEO Gary Smith's tuteledge and mentoring, as Gary is quietly the longest serving telecom equipment exec after John Chambers--success breeds success, and living/surviving in hard times brings lots of lessons."

For Overture, the appointment of Aquino comes at a time when the vendor is moving to expand out of its domestic roots and into key markets such as Asia Pacific, Europe and Latin America. Following the completion of its acquisition of the former Hatteras Networks, a deal that gave it increased Ethernet over Copper (EoC) capabilities, the vendor launched a new branding effort for the company, so Aquino will be likely building on the momentum that Reedy and the management team laid earlier this year.

Overall, the Ethernet Access Device (EAD) market segment which Overuture plays in is growing at a faster rate than Carrier Ethernet in general, which is growing faster than telecom capex.

According to a recent Infonetics report, the Ethernet Access Device EAD (EAD) market segment grew 17 percent in 2011 over 2010 and is forecast to grow 81 percent between 2012 and 2016.

For more:
- see the release

Special Report: Finding New Gold in Copper

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*Updated article with quotes from Michael Howard.