Turin hires ex-Luminous CEO

Turin Networks has named Chris Stark its new president of worldwide sales and marketing. Stark was the chief executive officer of Luminous Networks, a vendor of resilient packet ring (RPR) equipment.

Luminous introduced an RPR-over-Sonet platform in late 2003 after having some success in Asia selling RPR over fiber. RPR was designed to combine the resilience of Sonet with the efficiency of Ethernet. Though the concept was attractive to carriers, some say Luminous may have gone to market too far ahead of industry standards, giving the startup vendor a tough sell to major carriers.

Stark was named Luminous’ CEO in May 2004 as part of an effort to revive the company. He put more emphasis on the firm’s low-end gear, adding a few products to its E series of products, which found some traction among cable customers.

Less than a year after Stark’s appointment, however, Adtran acquired Luminous for less than $1 million.

Stark was also previously vice president of Alcatel Optics.

Turin has recently voiced plans to increase its 150-person workforce by 15% to 20% next year. In September, the vendor of multiservice transport gear named William Zerella its new chief financial officer.