Big Switch Networks, an OpenFlow company bringing the benefits of virtualization and cloud architecture to enterprise networks, today announced that Howie Xu has joined the company to lead the R&D organization.

Xu was at VMware for nine years before joining Big Switch Networks. He led VMware's networking R&D team for the past five years and, under his leadership, the team innovated and developed the industry's first Distributed Virtual Switch and collaborated with Cisco on Nexus 1000V. He joined VMware in 2002 as one of the lead developers in virtual networking. He is credited with co-inventing VMware's Virtual Switch and holds multiple patents in this area.

"Customers have a strong desire to see a different network infrastructure and management paradigm after decades of living with the status quo. Compared to server and storage virtualization, we have only seen the tip of the iceberg for what is possible in networking," said Howie Xu, VP of Engineering at Big Switch Networks. "Big Switch Networks has a great vision and strategy to disrupt the network world and to become the leader in this vastly changing industry."

"We're very excited to have Howie leading a world-class engineering team that we're continuing to grow," said Guido Appenzeller, CEO of Big Switch Networks. "This intersection of virtualization and networking is where the industry is headed, and the teams that are going to do well here are those that can bring world experts from both virtualization and networking industry together."

Big Switch Network's technical staff has doubled in size this year. More than 70 percent of the team has at least one graduate degree in CS; 50 percent of the team are former distinguished engineers, principal engineers, senior staff engineers or faculty from leading universities.

The company is continuing to hire and recently moved into its new corporate headquarters in Palo Alto.