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Skyport Systems, a startup focusing on enterprise security, is looking more and more like a big Juniper reunion.

Nils Swart is the latest former Juniper employee to join, having arrived earlier this month, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Most recently director of business development at Plexxi, Swart was previously Juniper's director of product strategy, working specifically on SDN. He worked at Juniper from 2004 to 2013.

Swart's arrival nearly coincides with another notable hire: Douglas Gourlay, former vice president of systems engineering at Arista Networks, has arrived at Skyport as "corporate VP," according to the startup's web site.

Gourlay's arrival is worth noting not only because he was a highly visible executive at Arista, but because he's now the only executive among those listed on Skyport's web site who never worked at Juniper. Here are three of the others:

  • Michael Beesley, CTO — formerly CTO of Juniper's infrastructure products.
  • Will Eatherton, VP of engineering — formerly vice president of engineering for high-end routers at Juniper.
  • Rob Rodgers, chief architect — former distinguished engineer at Juniper.

The entire executive team has Cisco experience as well. But the Juniperness of Skyport's leadership stands out more, partly because of its CEO, Stefan Dyckerhoff.

Dyckerhoff was Juniper employee No. 33 back in the day, and when he left Juniper in 2012, he was in charge of the Platform Systems Division, which includes routers and switches. Dyckerhoff was a big deal at Juniper, in other words. His replacement, Rami Rahim, was recently promoted to become Juniper's CEO.

After leaving Juniper, Dyckerhoff became (and still is) a managing director at Sutter Hill Ventures, which incubated and invested in Skyport.

The company hasn't revealed its product plans yet. It's working in the area of enterprise security, where a new approach is necessary because nature of enterprise services has changed, Dyckerhoff notes in a message to SDxCentral.

(Photo: Aztral's Skyport, from the Second Life Aviation Wiki.)