Brocade abruptly appointed Lloyd Carney to the position CEO today. He is replacing Michael Klayko, who served as the networking solutions maker’s chief executive since 2005.

“After a thorough and robust search process, the Board believes that Mr. Carney is the ideal leader to take Brocade to the next level,” said David House, the chairman of the Brocade Board of Directors. “Mr. Carney has a relentless passion for driving innovation and operational excellence. These characteristics, combined with his track record of execution including delivering growth and increasing shareholder value, make him an outstanding choice to lead Brocade into its next phase.”

Carney, who is also joining the Brocade board, is a career executive with 30 years of networking experience under his belt. He’s joining the company from Xsigo Systems, a datacenter fabric provider where he served as CEO – the same role he held during his stint at Micrmouse, a network performance specialist that was acquired by IBM in 2005.

Throughout his career Carney has held senior positions at a number of other companies. He was the chief operating officer of Juniper Networks for a while, served as the president for Nortel Networks, and ran Bay Networks’ enterprise group.

Carney is a solid pick for Brocade, which is currently in the process of adopting the software-defined networking trend.  The company acquired SDN startup Vyatta in an all-cash deal just a couple of months ago, and it’s now working on incorporating the technology into its core portfolio.

At the Brocade Tech Day event in September, VP of service provider products Ken Cheng offered us a glimpse into his company’s plans for SDN. The executive discussed the key advantages of the software-led approach and described what Brocade is doing to make the technology viable for client organizations.