Blue Coat Systems named a new head of research and development, the latest in a series of executive moves since the company had a CEO change last summer and was taken private by an investor group earlier this year.
Venkat Raghavan, a 20-year IT veteran and security expert, is Blue Coat's new senior vice president, research and development, reporting directly to Blue Coat CEO Greg Clark. Raghavan will lead all of Blue Coat's product management and R&D efforts, including its Web security and WAN optimization specialties.
Raghavan comes to Blue Coat from IBM, where he had led engineering and development for IBM Internet Security Systems. Raghavan had joined IBM through its 1999 acquisition of Dascom, where he'd overseen security and storage products. Earlier in his career, Raghavan was senior technology architect at Freddie Mac and a senior software engineer at Harris Corp.
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Clark said Blue Coat would continue to "aggressively" expand its executive team.
"Venkat arms Blue Coat to deliver a new class of security and optimization solutions to enterprises battling security and business operational risks created by shadow IT systems, applications moving to the cloud and the explosive adoption of BYOD," Clark said in a statement.
Clark was named Blue Coat CEO in August 2011 following the ouster of previous CEO Mike Borman amid an earnings shortfall. Then, in December, Blue Coat agreed to be taken private by an investor group led by Thoma Bravo for approximately $1.3 billion. That transaction closed in February.
All the while, Blue Coat has continued to make over its executive team under Clark. Along with Raghavan, Blue Coat in March named David Murphy, former senior vice president for Hewlett-Packard's LaserJet and Enterprise Solutions business and former IBM Tivoli president and general manager, its new COO and president. Last September, the company promoted Marc Andrews, former Blue Coat EMEA sales chief, to senior vice president of field operations.
