Departing Microsoft Corp. veteran Kevin Johnson was officially named CEO of Juniper Networks Inc. Thursday, effective upon his arrival in September.
Current Juniper CEO and board chairman Scott Kriens will remain active as board chairman, the networking vendor said in a statement.
“We are very excited to welcome Kevin as our new CEO,” said Kriens, who has been at Juniper 12 years, since the Sunnyvale, Calif., company was started.
Johnson was at Microsoft for 16 years and most recently was president of the platforms and services division, overseeing 14,000 workers as well as products such as Windows Vista, Windows Live and Web search. His departure was seen as a related to Microsoft’s failure to buy Yahoo Inc. Johnson issued no comment on that subject.
“I am delighted to join Juniper,” Johnson said. “Juniper is a company with a clear technology agenda, great talent and an amazing growth opportunity in a growing industry. I’m looking forward to bringing my experiences to help Juniper scale and deliver great value to Juniper’s customers, partners, employees and shareholders.”
Pradeep Sindhu, the founder of Juniper in 1996 and its chief technology officer, praised Kriens and said the Juniper team will grow stronger with the addition of Johnson. Sindhu noted that Johnson has a background in engineering but also in managing a large organization and has a “proven ability to lead companies through times of rapid growth.”