Networking Start-Up Nicira Hires New VP of Sales From Riverbed

Nicira, the once secretive networking research start-up that aims to mess up the business of giants like Cisco Systems, has just made another key executive hire. Denis Murphy, the senior vice president for the Americas at Riverbed Innovation, has joined Nicira as VP of Sales.

It aims to be the vendor of a new networking research that's built exactly for the age of cloud computing. During the pipes through which bits flow in and out of data centers have gotten faster, there’s a need to make them smarter and more flexible, not unlike virtual servers in that data center. Adding Nicira’s software to a server creates the ability to “spin up” virtual networks as willingly as you might virtual servers. In order to meet surging demand. Nicira calls it an NVP, or network virtualization platform. Clients include AT&T, eBay, Fidelity Investments, Rackspace and the Japanese telecom giant NTT are all using Nicira, the company says.

Tagged with: Andreessen Horowitz, Andy Rachleff, Cisco, Cisco Systems, Diane Greene, enterprise, Industry Moves, Juniper, Lightspeed Venture Partners, NEA, networking, Nicira