Dispersive Networks, a leading provider of programmable networking for mission-critical solutions, has named Edward J. Wood as its president and chief executive officer.

The appointment marks a new phase of growth for Dispersive Networks as it addresses increasing demand for ultra-secure, ultra-reliable and high-performance programmable networking beyond traditional SD-WAN.

Wood assumes day-to-day leadership of the company and succeeds Richard Harrison, who will become the company's chief operating officer. Wood spent 23 years in the Communications, Media and Technology Group at Accenture, a global management consulting firm. He had been a managing director of Accenture for 12 years before joining Dispersive Networks, focusing on carrier digital transformation.  

"Ed has worked closely with our team over the last few years and demonstrated that he is both a thought leader and visionary," said Dispersive board chairman Steve Shane. "We have already benefited from his help articulating our value proposition, defining our market strategy, and launching joint customer initiatives enabled by Dispersive's programmable networking and brought to market with Accenture. In his new role, Ed will have an opportunity to strengthen this partnership, accelerate our growth in new verticals and enable more customers to benefit from our solutions."

Dispersive Network's radically different approach to networking delivers new levels of security, reliability, and performance for mission-critical solutions. The company's 100% software-based programmable networking provides a foundation for innovation and transformation across industry verticals.

"This is a tremendous honor for me. I'm proud to be joining such an accomplished team," said Wood. "Programmable networking has the potential to transform almost every critical industry vertical. Energy, healthcare, financial services, government and a whole range of sectors demand highly secure but elastic and fluid networking at the lowest possible cost.

That is what Dispersive delivers and I'm excited to work with our strategic partners to bring these customer-focused industry solutions that address the most pressing issues in communications to the market."

The Dispersive™ Virtualized Network dynamically splits session-level IP traffic at the edge device into smaller, independent and individually encrypted packet streams. This results in ultra-secure solutions that have been verified in the most demanding industry verticals.

"We're going beyond the standard approach to networking to enable our partners to create unique and differentiated solutions that serve specific vertical industries," added Wood. "It's an exciting time in networking. Dispersive has the ability to make innovation and transformation a reality for organizations across the globe."