CENX Makes Mid-Winter CEO Switch

Ethernet exchange pioneer CENX (news) has appointed Herb Hribar as its new CEO.  Hribar has been around the block in the telecom executive world, with executive stints at Ameritech Wireless, Ameritech Europe, Sprint, Verio, Eircom, Cablecom, and Kabel Deutschland amongst others.  Other industry watchers have noted that much of this work took place at companies working up to an IPO or sale to a large company, and that CENX might be having similar thoughts.

Could be I guess, but I’ll wait for the S-1 filing before I believe they’re ready to IPO…  Seems like there’s lots of other work to get done before we reach that point.  Actually, I’d suggest that what CENX sees in Hribar is a man with very deep personal connections amongst a wide range of its target customers both in the US and across Europe as well.  Wherever the Ethernet exchange business goes from here, it is a safe bet that connectivity will be critical – both in terms of bits and in terms of the people who choose where to exchange them.   President and co-founder Nan Chen has lots of that connectivity on his own, but it’s a big sector and an even bigger planet and they haven’t cloned him just yet.

So what happened to Sandy Brown, who just took on the CEO position in the sumer of 2010?  I suppose we’ll never know the details, but obviously something didn’t work out.  Perhaps though it is that CENX is simply a moving target right now, with its future dependent on how the economic model for Ethernet exchanges continues to develop.  Last year was the buildout, this year will be about fine tuning and positioning and  minor details like figuring out where the revenues will come from and how big they will be.

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Categories: Ethernet