Brocade, on Wednesday, has announced the appointment of Matt Kolon to the role of chief technology officer (CTO) for Asia Pacific (APAC). In this new role, Kolon will be responsible for leading the company’s technology strategy and product roadmap within APAC.

He will also help align technology initiatives and execution closely with customer needs across the region, particularly in the areas of network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN). Kolon will be based in Beijing, China, and report directly to Brocade vice president for APAC, Adam Judd.

“Brocade is in a unique position to capture historic industry shifts and opportunities in software networking given its strong support of open networking standards and proven leadership in Ethernet fabrics. I am thrilled to join Brocade at this exciting time to help our regional customers and partners realize the benefits of this new network paradigm. The Brocade approach will help enterprises and service providers simplify the transition of their networks to drive new levels of business transformation”, said Matt Kolon.

With more than 15 years of specialized industry experience in developing long-term technical strategies with customers and partners, Kolon was most recently the APAC managing director for Evolved Programmable Network business and CTO for Service Providers at Cisco. Prior to Cisco, he spent 12 years at Juniper Networks, holding various executive roles in customer service, sales and marketing, and systems engineering.

“2014 will be the year where service providers, specifically those in APAC, start to test and deploy SDN in their data centers to drive growth and innovation for their businesses. Matt is an industry visionary who has been working closely with customers and partners in APAC in understanding their needs and transforming their networks. We are very pleased to have him on our regional leadership team as the value he brings to our customers and partners will be tremendous”, said Adam Judd, vice president for Asia Pacific at Brocade.