Echelon Corporation (NASDAQ:ELON), the open-interoperable control networking pioneer for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), announced that it has named Sohrab Modi as its chief technology officer (CTO), replacing the recently retired Robert Dolin. Modi previously held technology vice-president positions with both Huawei and Sun Microsystems.

Sohrab Modi, CTO, Echelon Corp. (Photo: Business Wire)

Sohrab Modi, CTO, Echelon Corp. (Photo: Business Wire)

“Echelon represents a remarkable opportunity: An established, well-respected company that has reinvigorated its core technologies to address the exciting IIoT market,” said Modi. “It is a privilege to join this company at this time.”

“Sohrab brings a strong track-record of innovation in Silicon Valley to our CTO role, and we’re looking forward to him leading the technical evolution of our industry-leading IIoT solutions,” said Ron Sege, CEO and chairman, Echelon Corp. “As one of the only independent companies delivering a vendor-neutral, IP-based control platform to the building automation and lighting markets, we have a unique opportunity to drive the growth of our industry with Sohrab’s help.”

New CTO combines technical and leadership skills

Sohrab Modi most recently served as vice president and CTO of Central Research and Development at FutureWei, a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary of Huawei, where he was responsible for technical strategy and planning for the company’s Internet of Things/machine-to-machine (IoT/M2M), cloud, big data, middleware, software-defined networking (SDN) and other initiatives. He also set Huawei’s software strategic direction and spearheaded corporate open-compute and open-source activities.

Before Huawei, Modi was a vice president in the corporate Chief Technology Office at Sun Microsystems, where he explored new business and technology opportunities for the company. Earlier, he was Sun’s vice president and general manager for N1 systems, an early cloud computing offering, and director of engineering for Sun Cluster, Sun’s high-availability (HA) solution for mission-critical and telecommunications company (telco) environments.

Earlier in his career, Modi was an engineering manager for Novell Inc., and he gained startup experience as CEO of Beehive Utility Inc. and as proprietor of Embee Corp. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Mumbai and his master’s degree in computer science from the Rochester (New York) Institute of Technology.

About Echelon Corporation

Echelon Corporation (NASDAQ: ELON), a pioneer in developing open-standard control networking platforms, delivers all the elements necessary to design, install, monitor and control industrial-strength ‘communities of devices’ within the lighting, building automation, grid, Internet of Things, ‘maker’ and other markets worldwide. Echelon develops and sells complete systems and subsystems for target applications, plus system-on-chips (SoCs), embedded software, and commissioning and management tools for OEMs. With more than 100 million Echelon-powered devices installed worldwide, the company helps its customers easily and safely migrate existing control systems to the most modern platforms, while bringing new devices and applications into an ever-growing global Industrial Internet. Echelon helps its customers reduce operational costs, enhance satisfaction and safety, grow revenues and perform better in both established and emerging markets. More information about Echelon can be found at www.echelon.com.

Echelon and the Echelon logo are registered trademarks of Echelon Corporation registered in the United States and other countries. Other product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

This press release may contain statements relating to future plans, events or performance. Such statements may involve risks and uncertainties; the risk that Echelon's product and service offerings by themselves or combined with other applications or offerings do not perform as designed or do not offer the expected benefits and savings; and other risks identified in Echelon's SEC filings. Actual results, events and performance may differ materially. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. Echelon undertakes no obligation to release publicly the result of any revisions to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.