Brocade (BRCD) has hired Benson Schliesser as a distinguished engineer following his departure from Juniper Networks (JNPR) in the fall. With a long history of technical and engineering jobs at Juniper, Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Savvis, Schliesser is an influential person in the networking space, particularly when it comes to cloud and the growing software-defined networking (SDN) trend.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Schliesser left Juniper in November after spending approximately 16 months at the company. While at Juniper, he was director of the platform systems division within the office of the CTO before taking on the role of distinguished engineer.
With a long list of accomplishments, Schliesser is a veteran technology professional, but that can be said about a lot of IT pros. What makes Schliesser a hot commodity at this time is his role as the chair of the Network Virtualization Overlays Group (NVO3) at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
That would give him keen insight into network virtualization and the trends arising within that space. Schliesser has held roles at the IETF for almost three years. He has also served in roles at the Open Networking Foundation and the OpenDaylight Project, both of which are heavily involved in the development and discussion of SDN technologies.
Adding Schliesser to the team should give Brocade an edge as it continues to build out its SDN and network functions virtualization (NFV) initiatives.
Maybe it’s a coincidence, but it seems like there is an ever-growing list of key technology and business professionals and leaders departing the big networking vendors in favor of working with smaller or more niche players. Schliesser looks to be the most recent of these departures.
