It's a story that's tragically familiar to so many children: Daddy has a new family and doesn't have as much time for you.

That's what happened to Juniper Networks on Monday, as co-founder Pradeep Sindhu said he's stepping aside as CTO to focus on his position as CEO of his new startup, Fungible. But Sindhu sys he'll stay on as chief scientist at Juniper.

Fungible is looking to improve cloud data center economics, security and reliability, in the face of Moore's Law slowdown "and the progressive increase in the ratio of communication to computation for contemporary applications," Sindhu said in a blog post Monday. We're not 100% sure what that last bit means either, but he seems to be saying that we're seeing more communications and less computation in today's apps.

Juniper has invested in Fungible, and Sindhu says he sees the two companies' technologies as complementary.

Sindhu says he expects to play an "active role" in the search for his successor as CTO, and will continue to serve in that capacity until Juniper finds a replacement.

Sindhu also plans to step aside as vice chairman of Juniper's board, to serve as technical advisor to the board. He says he won't stand for re-election as a director at the board's next meeting in May, though not through any disagreement with Juniper, the company notes in a Form 8-K statement filed Monday.

Sindhu founded Juniper along with Dennis Ferguson and Bjorn Liencres in 1996. He served briefly as CEO that year, and worked on the design of the company's M40 data router, which shipped in 1998, and served as CTO.

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LinkedIn lists Fungible as a "stealth startup" (another company that's unclear on the concept of "stealth"), "creating a hardware + software platform for data centers." Central to that technology is a "chip responsible for data movement," offering "low latency, high throughput," and high programmability. The company is privately held, with 11-50 employees, LinkedIn says.

Late last month Juniper introduced management software, a switch and professional services designed to help enterprises make the transition to public and hybrid clouds. (See Juniper Eases Transition to Hybrid, Public Clouds.)

Juniper specializes in end-to-end networking, distinguishing itself from competitors with broader portfolios such as Cisco and Huawei. (See What Is Juniper Nowadays? and Cloud Pumps Up Juniper's Q4.)

— Mitch Wagner, , Editor, Light Reading Enterprise Cloud

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