Bob Muglia, the executive vice president who's run Juniper's charge into software for the last two years, has left the company.

His departure was revealed in an SEC filing on Tuesday and first reported by the San Francisco Business Times.

One rumor says Muglia quit out of sadness when Juniper's OpenContrail won the SDxCentral Turkeys of SDN competition. No one outside SDxCentral's offices seems to have heard this rumor, however, so it's possible other factors are at work.

Namely, Juniper is clearly in the process of changing CEOs, as Kevin Johnson is stepping down. Shaygan Kheradpir, his replacement, takes the job on Jan. 1.

Johnson's departure alone might have spurred Muglia's decision, since Johnson recruited Muglia to execute Juniper's new software-heavy plan.

The past year has seen that plan infused with software-defined networking (SDN) following the acquisition of Contrail. The strategy was outlined in January and kicked into gear in September with the commercial launch of Contrail's products and its open-source strategy.

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