In a move that will strengthen its leadership team, LightRiver has hired former Ciena executive Scotty Benda as Chief Product Officer. The appointment further maximizes market opportunities in an era of open optical networking and automation for the company while accelerating its growth through increased scale/scope across all operations.

“The shift to open optical networks represents an unprecedented opportunity for LightRiver with our comprehensive ‘design, deploy and automate’ approach to multivendor network solutions,” states Mike Jonas, President of Global Customer Operations for LightRiver. “I’m thrilled to welcome Scotty to our leadership team as we scale our platform, enhance our value proposition and accelerate toward the next phase of growth.”

In his distinguished career in telecommunications, Benda has served in senior systems, software and services leadership roles at various companies including Nortel, Lucent, ONI and Ciena. While there, he successfully led innovative growth efforts and drove improvements in product, process and delivery performance within those companies.

“LightRiver has built a very strong leadership team complete with unmatched experience in its markets, a great portfolio of technologies, alliances and relationships, and is focused on the customer experience,” comments Benda, “I am excited to be in this role and to contribute to the successful growth of the firm as we deliver advanced connectivity solutions for our clients.”

To read this press release in its entirety, click here.