Drew Perkins is stepping down as chief technology officer at Infinera Corp. (Nasdaq: INFN), the company announced Wedneday afternoon. He'll remain a technical advisor to Infinera starting in January.

His job will be filled by Dave Welch, who's also Infinera's chief strategy officer.

Why this matters
Perkins helped found Lightera, which became the center of the Ciena Corp. (NYSE: CIEN) empire, followed by OnFiber Communications, which was acquired by Qwest -- and Infinera. He's not the first of the Infinera old guard to leave the company -- former CEO Jagdeep Singh left about two years ago -- but for optical networking watchers, his surprise departure is worth noting.

Infinera remains in good technological hands. The company will still have access to Perkins, and Welch was co-CTO in the company's early days.

It's going to be interesting to find out Perkins's motivations for leaving, since Infinera gave the generic "other opportunities" reason. Maybe he's just retiring -- but (idle speculation alert) what if he's got an even more dramatic startup up his sleeve?

For more
At least Perkins stuck around for the release of Infinera's 100Gbit/s product, the DTN-X:

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading