Harmonic Names CMO, SVP Of Video Products

Video-equipment vendor Harmonic announced the hiring of two executives -- Peter Alexander as chief marketing officer and Krishnan Padmanabhan, named senior vice president of video products -- and also appointed movie studio Miramax's head of strategy Mitzi Reaugh to its board.

Alexander is a 15-year veteran of Cisco Systems, where he was vice president of worldwide field marketing. Padmanabhan previously was vice president and general manager of NetApp's Manageability and Ecosystem Integration business unit.

Both execs will be based at Harmonic's San Jose headquarters and report directly to president and CEO Patrick Harshman.

In another management change, the company said Nimrod Ben-Natan now heads up the Harmonic's new Edge and Access business unit as senior vice president and general manager. Ben-Natan, who previously ran Harmonic's product marketing, solutions and strategy group, will oversee R&D and product management for Harmonic's edge and access products, including its future products that conform to CableLabs' Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) headend-consolidation specification.

In addition, Harmonic said Reaugh, senior vice president, strategy and business development at Miramax, is joining its board of directors. She previously was senior vice president of client solutions at Nielsen and worked in NBCUniversal's Digital Media unit.

"To continue to drive our market leadership and scale our business in light of the many new opportunities in our markets, we are sharpening our focus on key growth initiatives, including expansion in new media and in IP-based infrastructures and applications," Harshman said in announcing the changes. "The new senior management team's experience in scaling tech businesses, as well as their expertise in engineering, marketing, and sales, combined with the media and entertainment industry perspective that Mitzi brings to our board, position Harmonic to pursue this growth strategy aggressively."