Network company Ixia announced that it has appointed Bethany Mayer as the company's new President and CEO, along with being added to Ixia's board of directors.
Mayer's appointment becomes effective on the same day that Ixia's periodic filings become current with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Ixia chairman and acting CEO Errol Ginsberg expressed the company's excitement over the acceptance to lead the company by Mayer, who led Hewlett-Packard in its entry into network functions virtualization.
"Today's networking trends are revolutionary, not evolutionary, and virtualization is playing a key role in the transformation of service provider and enterprise networks around the world. Therefore, it was paramount for Ixia to find a candidate intimately involved with these new networking technologies, and we believe Bethany is the ideal executive to build upon Ixia's industry leading foundation," said Ginsberg in a statement.
Mayer assumes the CEO position after the resignation of former CEO Vic Alston last year, who received accusations of falsely padding his resume. Ixia's audit committee found out that Alston wrongly reported his academic credentials, employment history and age. Alston, who was found to have rightfully attended Stanford University, lied about having earned a bachelor's and master's degree in computer science.
Earlier this year, Mayer left her position as HP networking division head to become the company's senior vice president and general manager for its network functions virtualization division. Mayer took the job as HP moved into position to enter the NFV business.
NFV is a trend in network technology wherein carriers are transferring the software for their services from dedicated appliances and onto virtual devices and x86 servers. NFV looks to make it easier for carriers to develop and launch services faster than they can previously do with older software platforms.
Mayer leaves HP to lead Ixia, which specializes in sales of software, hardware and services for network testing, monitoring and optimization. One of Ixia's services is making devices that aim to simulate huge traffic amounts to test the network security of the company and the infrastructure of their chosen network service provider.
Ixia, which reported a net loss of $18 million for the first quarter of the year, announced earlier this month that it would be laying off as much as six percent of its employees. The company has lagged behind in submitting its most recent filings to the SEC and is currently working on updating its documents to remain listed on the Nasdaq stock market.
