Last Friday was Travis Ewert's last day as CenturyLink's vice president of software defined network and big data, according to a company spokeswoman.
Neither CenturyLink nor Ewert has said why he left, but Ewert said in a LinkedIn message that he was "absolutely staying in the industry." Ewert wrote on his LinkedIn profile that he was "deciding on 'next up' adventure."
Ewert's departure followed on the heels of James Feger leaving CenturyLink recently for a job with F5 Networks, which was first reported by Light Reading. Feger had spent 14 years with CenturyLink, most recently as vice president of network virtualization. Anil Simlot, vice president of virtual services development and support, has taken over Feger's former responsibilities.
The spokeswoman for CenturyLink said it has yet to be determined who would take over Ewert's former duties.
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Ewert's areas of focus at Level 3 and CenturyLink included SDN, NFV, cloud, automation and SD-WAN. In his previous positions, Ewert and his teams garnered some industry firsts around SDN and programmable networking for on-demand capacity and analytics-driven interfaces, among others.
Prior to the merger of CenturyLink and Level 3 Communications, Ewert held the title of senior vice president, network software development at Level 3 before joining CenturyLink in November. According to his LinkedIn profile, Ewert started working at Level 3 in 2014 after a 10-year stint in various executive positions at TW Telecom.
Before TW Telecom, Ewert was employed by Frontier Communications for two years and worked for US West Communications, which was bought by Qwest, for five years in various roles.