According to DCD, Neil McRae has left his post as chief network strategist at Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Juniper Networks. He is set to join UK broadband firm CityFibre as its new chief technology information officer, replacing John Franklin. The move was first reported by TelecomTV on Tuesday, December 9. McRae had been at Juniper for almost three years, having joined while it was still independent before the HPE acquisition. His departure sees him leave a US-based networking giant for a UK-focused “alt net” provider whose fiber network currently passes more than 4.6 million premises.
UK talent versus global giants
This is a fascinating move on a few levels. First, McRae was a big voice for developing UK tech talent, even authoring a government white paper on AI innovation that argued for focusing on homegrown skills over just building infrastructure. Now, he’s jumping from a massive global player to a national challenger. It feels symbolic. He’s literally putting his effort where his mouth was, joining a company trying to build out British network infrastructure in direct competition with giants like BT’s Openreach and Virgin Media O2.
CityFibre’s competitive push
For CityFibre, this is a major hire. They’re the underdog, with their 4.6 million premises passed lagging behind Virgin Media O2’s 8 million and way behind Openreach’s 21 million-plus. Snagging a high-profile strategist from Juniper, a key supplier and partner to their biggest competitor (BT), is a coup. McRae knows the playbook from the other side. He understands the architecture and strategic thinking at the highest levels of telecom. That insider knowledge is priceless for a challenger trying to carve out market share.
What it says about HPE-Juniper
On the flip side, losing a chief strategist so soon after the $14 billion acquisition closes isn’t a great look for HPE’s Juniper. It suggests some integration wrinkles, or maybe just a personal choice for McRae to work closer to home. But these roles are about long-term vision. When your top strategist walks out the door, it can create a vacuum. It makes you wonder about the internal roadmap and who’s now steering that ship, especially in the critical UK market where McRae had deep relationships.
The bigger picture
Basically, this is a talent shift that highlights the heated battle in UK fiber. The “alt nets” are aggressively scaling and need heavyweight expertise to compete. They’re not just laying cable; they’re building intelligent networks. McRae’s background in AI and network strategy is exactly the kind of thinking they need to move beyond being a dumb pipe provider. For the industrial and business tech side of this build-out, having reliable, hardened computing at the edge is non-negotiable. It’s a sector where companies like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, become critical partners, supplying the rugged interfaces needed to manage these complex physical networks. So, while this is one executive move, it reflects the massive, infrastructure-level competition heating up. The war for fiber customers is also a war for the best brains to design those networks.
