Guido Appenzeller, Big Switch Networks' founding CEO, was supposed to be moving to the CTO position. The company's web site now lists him as just a co-founder, though.

Who's CTO, then? It's Rob Sherwood, who's been doing a similar job all along; he's one of Big Switch's earliest employees and has carried the title of CTO of controller technologies. Appenzeller remains on the board and is doing "other work" for Murray, a spokeswoman tells SDxCentral via email.

The change seems to point to a diminished role for Appenzeller under new CEO Douglas Murray, whose arrival was announced in November.

Sherwood has been quite visible as a Big Switch bigwig. Here you can see his plenary talk at the 2013 Open Networking Summit, where he stood in for Appenzeller (who had a pretty good excuse for not showing up):

Big Switch is in the process of establishing a new identity supplying software for bare-metal switches. Beta kits for its architecture, which involves using one controller for both physical and virtual switches, went out late last year.