David Yen, architect of Juniper's QFabric, joins Cisco

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 10 May 2011 17:41

IT Industry - Strategy

Sun Microsystems veteran David Yen - who has spent the past three years leading Juniper Networks Stratus R&D project that culminated in the launch of its QFabric data centre network technology in February - has joined arch rival Cisco to become general manager of Cisco's Server Access and Virtualisation Technology Group.

The group is responsible for Cisco's Unified Computing System -which includes data centre servers developed in conjunction with Intel - and Nexus server access data centre switching portfolio. In his new role Yen will report to the co-leaders of Cisco's engineering organisation, senior vice presidents Padmasree Warrior and Pankaj Patel.

Yen was most recently executive vice president and general manager of Juniper Network's Fabric and Switching Business Group, where he led Juniper's multiyear data centre network research and development initiative, known as Project Stratus, unveiled in February 2009. The project culminated in the announcement of QFabric in February this year.

Before joining Cisco, Yen spent 20 years at Sun Microsystems, where he led development of Sun's first-and-second-generation multi-CPU servers, which helped transform Sun from a workstation company to a leading enterprise server company. After taking over Sun's microelectronics group in 2001, he grew Sun's SPARC operation into a multi-billion dollar business.

At Cisco Yen takes leadership of Cisco's Server Access Virtualisation Group (SAVG) from Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain and Luca Cafiero, three of the founders of Nuova Systems, a company acquired by Cisco in 2008 that formed the basis for SAVG.

Cisco said they had "decided to transition out of their current roles to supporting Cisco in an advisory capacity. They will continue as senior technical advisors to Cisco chairman and CEO John Chambers and support a smooth transition as David Yen moves into his new role."

According to Cisco "Unified Computing System and the Nexus family of data centre switches are two of Cisco's fastest growing product families. Sales of the Nexus 5000 grew 56 percent year over year in the second quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2011. Nexus 2000 revenues grew 150 percent.

"In the same period, Cisco reached almost 4,000 customers for its Unified Computing System, just eighteen months since the first generation of the platform shipped. As of Cisco's fiscal year second quarter 2011, Cisco's Unified Computing System had an annualised revenue run rate of $US650m."