Jeffrey Schmitz named as chairman for CloudEthernet Forum

In a release, James Walker, President of the CloudEthernet Forum (CEF) announced the CEF’s key appointments, goals and technical objectives for its first year.

Jeffrey Schmitz, Chief Marketing Officer, Spirent Communications plc is appointed Chairman. Five new members were welcomed at the Forum’s first quarterly meeting in Montreal.

Two technical co-chairs have been appointed – Sam Youn, Director Network Architecture, Equinix and Mike Bencheck, Verizon Fellow – plus two marketing co-chairs to direct the Forum’s outreach and education strategy: Henry Bohannon, Senior Director, Head of Ethernet Product Management, Tata Communications and Doug Wills, Senior Director, Product Marketing & Management, Juniper Networks.

“Given the high quality of CTOs and technical leaders we have already attracted to the CloudEthernet Forum, I feel we have created a winning team of C-level business leaders” said Walker. “I am now confident we have the experience, skills and commitment to make significant progress in resolving the industry’s most pressing issues around cloud computing”.

The CloudEthernet Forum – launched on May 23rd to celebrate 40 years of Ethernet Innovation – attracted immediate interest for addressing one of the hottest issues to emerge from the current surge in Cloud uptake: Namely the need for scaling and enhancing Ethernet technology to meet the stringent demands of delivering cloud services.

Eleven founding members – Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Citrix, Equinix, HP, Huawei, Juniper, PCCW Global, Spirent, Tata Communications and Verizon –have already been joined by Ciena, Coresite, Cyan, Ericsson and Telx.

Thereat a high profile event is agreement about the need to attract more end-users to balance the strong NEM presence with the recruitment of large scale cloud service providers and their enterprise customers.