Brocade finds new chief

Switch maker Brocade has appointed former Juniper and Nortel executive Lloyd Carney to its top role after an almost five-month search.

Lloyd Carney (courtesy: Brocade)

Carney, 50, replaces Mike Klayko, who announced his intention to resign from the chief executive role in August last year.

Klayko had stayed at the helm while a replacement was found.

Carney is perhaps best known as the former CEO of Micromuse, which was sold to IBM in 2005 for US$865 million. Its network management software was integrated with Big Blue's Tivoli framework.

He also has solid network hardware credentials, being a former chief operating officer of Juniper Networks and enterprise division president at Nortel Networks, among other roles.

Brocade's board chairman, David House, hoped Carney's "track record of execution", as well as his "relentless passion for driving innovation and operational excellence", would give the company a fresh kick "into its next phase", though he did not elaborate.

Bloomberg speculated last year that Klayko's departure could make it easier for Brocade to be sold off, reporting that the company had been "the target of takeover talks for years".

The company's profitability slipped by 15 percent in 2011/12, after several successive years of growth.