Data center networking equipment maker QLogic announced on Monday that H.K. Desai, a long time company veteran who most recently served as executive chairman and the head of its board, has passed away Sunday from sudden cardiac arrest. He was 68.

Desai joined QLogic in August 1995 and secured a permanent position at the firm’s helm the following year. Under his leadership, the vendor exited its original disk controller business and refocused on the Fibre Channel host bus adapter (HBA) space, where it would surpass former parent company Emulex to become the definitive market leader for over ten years now and counting.

Desai stepped down as CEO in November 2010 and temporarily handed over the reins to Simon Biddiscombe, who was later replaced by chief financial officer Jean Hu after two years of revenue declines blamed on reduced demand for HBAs stemming from the lowered hardware requirements of virtual environments.

In January this year, QLogic appointed former EMC engineering head Prasad Rampalli, who is known for his long-term strategic focus, to lead the company. On this week’s somber news, he commented that “this is a terrible loss for me personally and for all of us here at QLogic. HK dedicated most of his working life to building QLogic into the Company it is today. His positive spirit, enthusiasm and commitment will be greatly missed by all of us who had the honor of working with HK.”

Although Desai left gigantic shoes to fill, Rampalli has so far  lived up the task. His first major move as chief exec was signing off a landmark patent deal with Broadcom under which his firm had agreed to license certain intellectual property relating to the latter’s programmable NetXtreme II Ethernet controller family for approximately $147 million in cash. The semiconductor giant, in turn, had agreed to shell out $62 million for non-exclusive rights to some QLogic’s Fibre Channel patents.