Big Switch Networks Continues to Expand Its Executive Ranks With Two New Strategic Hires

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwire - Oct 17, 2011) - Big Switch Networks, an OpenFlow company bringing the benefits of virtualization and cloud architecture to enterprise networks, today announced that Isabelle Guis has joined as VP of Outbound Marketing and Mansour Karam as VP of Strategic Alliances. Last month, the company announced that Howie Xu, who led VMware's networking R&D team, was appointed VP of Engineering (http://www.bigswitch.com/wp/vmware-veteran-howie-xu-joins-rapidly-expanding-big-switch-networks-as-vp-of-engineering/).

"We're delighted to welcome Isabelle and Mansour to the executive team," said Guido Appenzeller, CEO of Big Switch Networks. "Our goal is to build the number one software-defined networking (SDN) company, and we're excited to be bringing on the top talent as leadership to help us achieve this goal."

Guis will lead outbound marketing. She has extensive global experience spanning several networking companies where she held a variety of positions from R&D to product management and marketing for both enterprise and service provider market segments. Prior to joining Big Switch Networks, she was the General Manager of Avaya's Small and Medium Enterprise Communications Business Unit with worldwide responsibilities for product design, development, marketing and indirect sales. At Cisco, she was instrumental in the post-acquisition integration of the WLAN start-up Airespace with Cisco Go-To-Market and also led several Mobile Vertical Solutions from design and testing to launch.

"I'm excited to join Big Switch Networks' world-class team," said Isabelle Guis, VP of Outbound Marketing at Big Switch Networks. "The networking industry is at a major turning point, and Big Switch Networks is uniquely positioned to bring the benefits of virtualization to networking, allowing customers to unlock the full potential of their infrastructure."

As VP of Strategic Alliances, Karam will be responsible for strategic alliances, business development and the partner ecosystem. Prior to Big Switch Networks, he was one of the first employees at Arista Networks where he developed the initial product, marketing, sales and partner strategies. He was later appointed to run business development for Arista Networks where he built the company's strategic alliances and partner ecosystem.

"With cloud infrastructures establishing a new standard in flexibility, agility and virtualization, customers have been demanding game-changing networking solutions that bring the same level of flexibility, agility and virtualization to their networking infrastructures," said Mansour Karam, VP of Strategic Alliances at Big Switch Networks. "I look forward to forging meaningful alliances with our strategic ecosystem partners to deliver unique solutions to our customers."

Big Switch Networks is continuing to hire. Those interested in a career should email careers@bigswitch.com.

About Big Switch Networks
Big Switch Networks was founded in 2010 to bring the benefits of virtualization and cloud architecture to enterprise networks using OpenFlow. Big Switch Networks is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. For more information, visit: http://www.bigswitch.com.