Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Cedar Point picks Excel’s Murphy as new CEO

By Mass High Tech Staff

Derry N.H.-based communications equipment maker Cedar Point Communications Inc. has named former Excel Switching Corp. president John (J.C.) Murphy president and CEO. Murphy takes over for interim CEO Curt Hockemeier, who took the helm in January after the departure of long time CEO Andy Paff.

Hockemeier will remain on the company’s board of directors. Paff recently took the position of managing director at Headwaters MB LLC, a boutique investment banking firm in Boston.

Murphy first joined Cedar Point last October as executive vice president of sales. He spent eight years at Excel Switching and its later incarnation, Dedham-based Cantata Technology Inc. He led Excel through its acquisition by Lucent Technologies Inc. in 1999, its subsequent spinout from that company in 2003 and its acquisition of Dedham’s Brooktrout Technology Inc. in 2005, which created Cantata.

The placement of a permanent CEO closes the void left by Paff, but the move also caps a year-long restructuring of Cedar Point’s executive team. Aside from adding Murphy last October, Cedar Point brought in CFO Donald Halsted, former CFO of Marlborough-based 3Com Corp., along with executive vice president of engineering John O’Hara, formerly of Waltham-based Colubris Networks Inc., last July. Chief technology officer Mark Tubinis, formerly of Alcatel, joined the company last spring as well.

Cedar Point makes switching products for cable and multiservice operators, as well as enterprise and campus environments. Its flagship product, Safari C(Cubed), boasts customers in the Americas, Europe and the Caribbean. The company has raised more than $78 million in private funding since 2002.