Infoblox has named former Cisco executive Jesper Andersen as president and CEO.

The appointment was announced Tuesday afternoon and takes effect Dec. 8. Andersen is replacing Robert Thomas, who had announced in May that he'd be stepping down; Thomas will stick around for "about four months" to handle the transition, Infobox's press release says.

Andersen, 51, left Cisco a year ago, having most recently served as senior vice president of service provider video. He hasn't held a full-time position since then, at least not according to his LinkedIn profile.

From 2008 to 2011, Andersen was Cisco's senior vice president of network management, a job that seems a little bit closer to Infoblox's core business of secure DNS and DHCP products. He's also held executive positions at Oracle, PeopleSoft, and Pivotal.

You can learn more about him in a little introductory video that Infoblox posted today. He even namechecks software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV).

Andersen takes over a company that's had a tough year. Infoblox stock fell sharply in February and in May, both times on disappointments related to earnings or earnings forecasts. (Thomas' retirement announcement in May might have contributed, too.)

Infoblox's closing share price of $17.95 on Wednesday — up $1.06 (6.3%) on the day — is 44 percent lower than its $31.78 price of a year ago.