PacketFabric has reeled in former Cisco executive Dave Ward as its new CEO. Ward previously served a stint as the chief technology officer of engineering at Cisco.
After two years at Juniper Networks, Ward joined Cisco in 2011. In addition to being CTO of engineering, Ward was also a chief architect and senior vice president at Cisco's networking and security business.
RELATED: Former CIO exec, data center sales head leaving Cisco
During a re-org late last year, Cisco said that Ward was leaving his CTO position to take on another role at the company, but Cisco never announced a new position for Ward.
In addition to holding hundreds of patents, Ward is one of just two people to have been named both Cisco and Juniper Fellows for his work on operating systems and routing systems, including ASICS, optics, network APIs and software-defined networking (SDN.)
PacketFabric offers enterprises on- demand networking-as-a-service (Naas) provisioning coupled with consumption-driven business models. Using its SDN-based architecture, PacketFabric competes against Alkira, Aviatrix, Megaport, and Pureport in helping enterprise IT teams build their own networks by using existing cloud infrastructure.
“I could not be more excited to join PacketFabric at this critical juncture in the company’s trajectory," Ward said in a statement. "During a career spanning over two decades in the telecommunications and networking sectors, I’ve been privileged to drive innovation for Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks.
"PacketFabric is fundamentally rethinking enterprise and service communications in a way that others have not. I’ve been very impressed with PacketFabric’s technology, go-to-market and business models, strong customer feedback and unique talent.”