Packet-optical equipment vendor Cyan Inc. says Mark Floyd, the company's chairman, is taking over as CEO.

Telecom vet Floyd joined the Cyan board in 2007 and was appointed chairman in January. The company's founder, Michael Hatfield, will remain as Cyan's president. (See Cyan Names New Chairman.)

Floyd spent two years as CEO of SafeNet Inc., a role he left last summer. Floyd is best know for founding Efficient Networks Inc., which he took public and later sold to Siemens in April 2001 for $1.5 billion. After his Efficient exit, he was CEO of Entrisphere, a fiber access equipment vendor that Ericsson bought in 2007.

[Light Reading profiled Floyd in 2002. For more on that, see: Entrisphere Nabs Siemens Exec.]

Why this matters
With about four and a half years on Cyan's board, Floyd says his main agenda item is to get the company ready for bigger strategic moves. Right now much of Cyan's business is in the U.S. and all of its sales are direct to customers. International expansion and partner relationships might help the company reach more service providers as it expands, Floyd tells Light Reading.

Hatfield sees Cyan as being well positioned for growth outside the U.S. because its packet-optical transport systems and management software "help service providers solve problems that aren't country-specific." Also, he says that Cyan even has some paying customers that only use its network management software and not its hardware, a testament to the hard work the vendor has applied toward vendor interoperability.

For more

• Cyan Targets Usage-Based Ethernet
• Cyan Widens Its Ethernet View
• Cyan Aiming High With Management Play

— Phil Harvey, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading