Brocade has appointed Benson Schliesser as Engineer. Schliesser will play an integral role in the direction of Brocade Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) strategies and work with customers to ensure the resulting products meet their requirements.

At Brocade, Schliesser will focus on strategic initiatives to further Brocade leadership in the key areas of Ethernet fabrics, software networking and data center routing and switching. Additionally, he will work with customers to design next-generation architectures to rapidly deliver new services.

He has expertise in network architectures, cloud computing and data centers. Schliesser will join the Office of the CTO and report to Ken Cheng, chief technology officer and vice president, corporate development and emerging business., Brocade.

“Benson’s history of leadership roles as an end-user, a vendor and in industry associations is a clear indication of his broad understanding of the evolving networking landscape and technologies,” said Cheng. He adds, “His past experience with leading large-scale cloud service rollouts and data center virtualization deployments will make Benson an invaluable resource for Brocade customers who are focused on adopting SDN and NFV technologies.”

Prior to joining Brocade he served in the office of the CTO at Juniper and prior to that as a principal engineer in the service provider CTO office at Cisco. He has also worked with Savvis.