ProLabs Adds Carrier Sales Exec

CIRENCESTER, England -- ProLabs, the leading global independent provider of network infrastructure and connectivity products, announced today two strategic new hires to expand its product range and grow its business in the carrier market. Christian Rookes has been named director of product management, and Joe Tordy will serve as vice president of U.S. carrier sales, effective immediately.

Rookes is responsible for driving ProLabs’ product innovation by upgrading and integrating advanced technology within ProLabs’ wide range of transceiver, cable and converter products. Rookes has more than 17 years of experience within the optical transceiver industry. Prior to this role, Rookes was marketing director at UK-based HiLight Semiconductor, a chip development company for optical transceivers. Previously, he held positions at Nanotech, Semtech/Gennum, Phyworks and Hewlett Packard/Agilent. Rookes is based in Cirencester, England, reporting to Stephen Burke, vice president of EMEA sales at ProLabs.

With more than 15 years of industry experience, Tordy is responsible for boosting ProLabs’ prominence in the telecom carrier market by expanding and managing the carrier and multiple-system operators (MSOs) business in the Americas. Tordy will also manage ProLabs’ large MSO customers and help explore other business commercial opportunities for the company. Prior to this position, Tordy was part of the sales teams for Oracle, Juniper Networks and Motorola. Tordy will be based in Philadelphia, USA, reporting to Ward Williams, chief commercial officer at ProLabs.

“Rookes and Tordy have demonstrated excellence and leadership in their focus areas,” said Nick Moglia, CEO of ProLabs. “We welcome them to the team as they play key roles in helping us achieving our goals to expand globally, serve our vertical market customers, and exceed their technology demands.”

Within the past year, ProLabs has doubled its executive team. The company’s growth also reflects the predicted global growth within the optical components market. Market research firm Ovum expected the global optical components market to expand eight per cent last year due to network traffic growth and the infrastructure needed for cloud services, and the Wintergreen Research predicts the global optical transceiver market will grow to $6.7 billion by 2019 driven by network traffic and the availability of 100Gbps devices.

ProLabs