Astellia appoints Benamar as CEO

Network analytics vendor Astellia has announced the appointment of former Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson exec Abdelkrim Benamar as its new CEO.

Benamar joined Astellia last year as COO, having previously been EMEA VP for networks vendor Alcatel-Lucent. His rapid promotion indicates the commercial and operational performance improvements he was brought in to implement have gone well. Prior to A-Lu, Benamar was part of Ericsson’s French operations for seven years.

This move appears to be the culmination of a choreographed succession plan, with incumbent CEO and company co-founder Christian Queffelec moving up to the Chairman role, with a vow to keep an active role in the company.

“We are pleased to see Abdelkrim Benamar lead the company,” said Queffelec. “We firmly believe he has the experience, competences and management talent needed to drive Astellia’s growth. He embodies the fundamental values and strengths of our company. After working closely together for more than a year, he has all our confidence and we are wishing him best of luck in his new function.”

“I am very honoured and pleased today to take up the leadership of the company and would like to thank the Board of Directors as well as its Chairman for the confidence and trust they have put in me,” said Benmar. “I will drive the company to deliver unique intelligence through automated optimization and prescriptive analytics for successful network, service and subscriber value management.”