Arris CEO Bruce McClelland today named Dan Whalen as his replacement in the company’s network and cloud business.
"Dan played an instrumental role in scaling Arris’ Global Services business into a key enabler of complex customer deployments around the world," said McClelland in a statement from the company. "His proven track record of success, breadth of customer leadership and strategic insights provide an excellent foundation for helping our Network and Cloud business achieve the next era of growth."
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Whalen has worked as the vendor’s SVP and GM of Global Services since 2013. “In that role, he led the team responsible for aligning Arris’ services and expertise with key industry initiatives to drive advanced technology deployments for global cable, telco, satellite, programming, enterprise, internet and cellular providers,” the company said.
During his 20-year career, Whalen has also worked at Cisco, KPMG and Bell Atlantic on technologies ranging from broadband to OSS/BSS to fiber to Wi-Fi.
McClelland’s appointment of Whalen comes roughly two months after McClelland himself was named Arris’ new CEO, replacing longtime chief executive Bob Stanzione – Stanzione moved to the position of executive chairman. McClelland joined Arris in 1999 following an 11-year stint at Nortel/Bell Northern Research. He oversaw the development of Nortel’s SS7 switching productions just before joining Arris.
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Whalen will take over McClelland’s former division at a key time for Arris. The vendor just last week reported another quarter of solid sales with revenue increasing 41 percent year-over-year to $1.725 billion in the third quarter, while income rose 75 percent to $146.7 million. Importantly, in its network and cloud business, third quarter sales totaled $504 million, up from $410 million in the year-ago time period.
In discussing Arris’ third quarter network results specifically, McClelland said the company expects to grow as it begins ramping up product lines for Distributed Access Architectures. "DAA moves the generation of the QAM signal out to the fiber node and leverages digital optics to support longer transmission lengths, support faster broadband speeds and more capacity," McClelland said. "We demonstrated these capabilities at SCTE, and we expect to begin lab and field trials in the first half of 2017."
Arris isn’t the only cable vendor undergoing a leadership change. Chuck Robbins took over as CEO of Cisco last year, and earlier this year he named Yvette Kanouff as the chief of an expanded service provider organization at Cisco that combined Cisco’s SP segment, SP cloud, mobility and Service Provider Video Software and Solutions (SPVSS), as Business Insider noted in May.