Comcast has hired former Cisco executive Ken Klaer to the position of senior vice president, premises technology where he will lead the cable operator’s customer premise equipment team.
Klaer’s hiring filled the gap from Steve Reynolds’ departure from the same role last year to become CTO of what later became Imagine Communications.
Klaer heads up Comcast’s CPE team that that develops products across its triple play services and cross-platform applications for the MSO’s residential subscribers. He reports to Sree Kotay, senior vice president, chief software architect for Comcast.
Klaer was most recently part of Cisco’s service provider video technology group. Prior to that he held key senior management roles in general management, business development, product services management and production control at Scientific Atlanta before it was bought by Cisco.
“Ken brings more than 20 years of hardware and software experience to this role and is joining Comcast at an exciting and ambitious time as we step up our device ambitions in 2014, particularly with our X1 entertainment operating system,” Kotay said. “I’m delighted Ken will be leading our technology strategies while working closely with our product development and product engineering teams to help bring innovative features and services to our customers faster than ever.”
Reynolds’ team at Comcast played a key role in the development of the reference design kit (RDK) prior to the forming of a joint venture with Time Warner Cable last year. Liberty Global joined the joint venture, RDK Management, this year. To date, the RDK has 140 licensees.
Comcast is in the process of scaling its X1 platform rollout as well as updating X1 with new features and applications such as improved personalization and more support for apps.