Force10 Networks found a new CEO this week from its own ranks, promoting its senior VP of worldwide sales to the post on the retirement of Marc Randall.

Force10 said new CEO James Hanley has more than 20 years of experience in leading sales, marketing and operations teams, including experience at CA, EMC and NeoScale Systems. Hanley said in a statement that he would build on the company's strength in creating efficient network infrastructure, while pushing the technology into management automation and virtualization.

Force10 builds Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet routing switches, which it is aiming at data centers, among many other places. The company is behind the standards effort for Converged Enhanced Ethernet, which extends Ethernet for data center applications. Plus, Force10 earlier this year pointed out that its switches provide the communications for many of the world's fastest supercomputers, and last year the company said it had a Cisco Catalyst killer. Force10 was founded in 1999.

Randall has been CEO since 2003. He joined Force10 in 2001 as vice president of engineering, coming from Cisco, where he oversaw development of high-end routers. He said in a statement, "I leave the company knowing that James has the experience to ensure that Force10's history of innovation, market leadership and revenue milestones are prologue to even greater success in the years ahead."

Force10 said it is concluding its 2008 fiscal year with a revenue growth rate "well above the industry average," and cited Dell'Oro Group data that show Force10 in second place in market share for total 10 Gigabit Ethernet revenue.

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.