
Cisco announced it has named former Juniper executive David Yen to head its Server Access and Virtualization Technology Group.
As general manager and senior vice president for SAVTG, Yen will report to the co-leaders of Cisco’s engineering organization, Senior Vice Presidents Padmasree Warrior and Pankaj Patel.
Most recently, Yen served as executive vice president and general manager of Juniper Network’s Fabric and Switching Business Group, where he led Juniper’s multiyear data center network research and development initiative, known as Qfabric.
Yen also spent 20 years at Sun Microsystems, where he led development of Sun’s first-and-second-generation multi-CPU servers. After taking over Sun’s microelectronics group in 2001, he turned around Sun’s SPARC business and developed it into a multibillion-dollar business.
In his new role, Yen will be taking over leadership of the SAVTG from Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain and Luca Cafiero, the founders of Nuova Systems, whose acquisition by Cisco in 2008 led to the creation of SAVTG.
“We couldn’t be happier to secure such a talented engineering leader as David Yen to continue the success of our remarkable UCS and Nexus businesses,” said Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers. “David is inheriting a product portfolio that is firing on all cylinders. Mario, Luca and Prem’s tremendous leadership and innovation has helped Cisco truly revolutionize the world’s data centers, and we thank them for that, and for the continuing role they will play as advisers to Cisco.”