Cirba Inc., the leading provider of software-defined infrastructure control solutions, today announced the appointment of Ben Fathi to its board of directors.

Mr. Fathi has extensive experience as an executive leader in the virtualization and cloud software market. He is currently head of engineering at CloudFlare, a leading Internet performance and security company. Prior to that, he served as CTO of VMware as well as senior vice president in charge of vSphere.

"I am excited about joining Cirba's board of directors. I first heard about Cirba from friends who were impressed with the product and the capex and opex savings it offered in their virtualized environments. Discussions with executives from the company as well as other members of the board of directors convinced me that they have a winning strategy and a great product. I look forward to working with Gerry and the team as they define the next generation of products and services from Cirba," said Ben Fathi.

"I am thrilled to be working with Ben. He has spent the last three decades building products that power the infrastructures of our customers and I cannot think of anyone more qualified to contribute to Cirba's vision and strategy," said Gerry Smith, president and CEO, Cirba.

Mr. Fathi has more than 30 years of experience in the computer industry, with an expertise in developing operating system software. Prior to joining VMware, he served as a senior vice president at Cisco leading the operating systems and networking protocol teams. Prior to Cisco, he held multiple roles at Microsoft over 12 years, most recently as corporate vice president of development for the Windows core operating system division. Mr. Fathi holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in computer science, as well as a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology from the University of Massachusetts.