The Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) has announced several senior appointment to its board, topped by the selection of Ihab Tarazi, Verizon’s vice president of global network planning, as its new chairman.
In addition to Tarazi, the MEF announced it will retain Nan Chen as president. Other officers will include:
- Robert Kuse, director of commercial engineering, Cox Communications, as treasurer
- Arie Goldberg, CEO and co-founder, Omnitron Systems as secretary
- Kevin Vachon as COO.
Board members will now include:
- Lionel Florit, senior manager, Cisco Systems
- Andrew McFadzen, head of global marketing, Orange Business Services
- Scott Mansfield, principal engineer, Ericsson
- Eric Puetz, director of strategic standards, AT&T
- Raghu Ranganathan, senior advisor (Office of CTO) Ciena
- Ralph Santitoro, director of Carrier Ethernet market development, Fujitsu Network Communications
- Karen Schmidt, executive director, product management and strategy, Comcast Business Services.
Chen was particularly pleased with Tarazi’s appointment. “Ihab is one of the most influential and respected leader in the global telecommunications industry and brings us tremendous first-hand knowledge of planning and engineering one of the largest and most advanced Ethernet networks in the world,” explained Chen. “We have already benefited greatly from his presence and leadership on our board, which undoubtedly will accelerate adoption of CE 2.0 and advance Carrier Ethernet deployment.”
“I am pleased and honored to join the MEF leadership team of this prominent organization that has done an outstanding job of advancing Carrier Ethernet globally,” said Tarazi. “The time is right to focus on simplifying the Carrier Ethernet technology and operations model and improving interoperability with enterprise, mobile and cloud applications. At the same time, I look forward to helping MEFexpand its goal of addressing other areas such as operations and planning and their impact on Carrier Ethernet technology.”