Colin Dixon is the latest edition to the Brocade Networks (BRCD) team, where he will take on the position of Principal Engineer for the networking solutions company. In his new position, Dixon will work with the engineering leadership team of Brocade’s Software Networking business unit and focus on open source projects such as OpenDaylight, the Linux-founded open platform for network programmability for software-defined network (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) enablement.

Dixon has a long history in networking and open source development and is also considered a guru on SDN for scalable and distributed systems. Throughout his career, Dixon has worked in various aspects of the SDN community, most recently spending the past 10 years focusing on the advancement of networking, protocols and data center technologies through his academic and industry research initiatives. In his research, Dixon has examined how to build network fabrics using commodity Ethernet hardware controlled by software running on commodity servers.

“Colin has spent his career focused on where the network is headed, not where it is today, and this will serve as a big benefit to Brocade as we continue to refine our strategy,” said Kelly Herrell, VP and GM of Software Networking at Brocade, in a prepared statement. “Colin brings a deep and technical background that spans both the hardware and software spectrums that will define next-generation mobile and cloud networks.”

Dixon also co-authored “The Dixon-Erickson OpenDaylight Merged Controller Proposal,” which is widely regarded as the core controller plan of record for the project, in development since April 2013. He also worked with the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) and the Forwarding Abstractions Working Group (FAWG) to establish the basis for Table Type Pattern (TTP) standard to allow switches and controllers to negotiate richer functionality with the OpenFlow protocol, according to the release. His work resulted in him being named an Outstanding Technical Contributor in October of 2012. He has held research positions at major IT companies including IBM Research’s Austin Lab, Microsoft Research and Intel Research.

“Brocade has recognized the importance of open architectures for the future of networking and is aggressively focused on delivering the solutions built for the next era of networking,” Dixon said. “The company’s active participation in industry organizations beyond OpenDaylight is a testament to Brocade’s commitment to this vision and one that I am excited to be a part of.”