Ixia, a provider of IP performance test systems, announced the appointment today of ex-Nortel vice president Atul Bhatnagar to the newly created position of president and chief operating officer. The company said Bhatnagar will likely take over as CEO as part of an eventual succession plan.

Bhatnagar will also join Ixia’s Board of Directors. He has more than 20 years of experience in the computing and communications industries and served most recently as vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Data Networks Division of Nortel. Bhatnagar will report to CEO Errol Ginsberg for now.

Bhatnagar will assume overall responsibility for Ixia’s daily operations and will be involved with strategy and long-term business planning. Ginsberg will focus primarily on high-level product development and longer-term strategic planning, as well as the evaluation of market opportunities and potential acquisitions.

“We feel he will add a lot of experience and customer focus to our executive team,” said Vic Alston, senior vice president of product management at Ixia. “He’s has a lot of experience selling to our new market, which is service providers.”

At Nortel, Bhatnagar was responsible for the design and marketing of a full range of Ethernet switches, security solutions, WLAN mobility solutions, metro Ethernet technologies and enterprise routers. Ethernet is a growing area of importance for Ixia as well.

Prior to Nortel, Bhatnagar was vice president of advanced WebSwitching products and security acceleration. Alteon Web Systems was acquired by Nortel in 2000. He also spent 15 years at HP where he held several general management assignments in North America and Asia.

Ginsberg said he expects to remain an active employee focused on strategy and technology and will continue to serve as a member of the Board of Directors, but if all goes as planned Bhatnagar will be appointed as CEO in early 2008.

This announcement comes a week after Ixia announced the opening of its new sales and customer support center in Bangalore, India. The center will provide core development functions and pre- and post-sales activities. The company said it plans to increase its presence across the Asia-Pacific region, including in the carrier, enterprise and government markets.

This is where Ixia is making its big push into the service provider space. Asia-Pac is moving swiftly with carrier Ethernet, and that is another area of focus for Ixia and an area in which it was and is entrenched with Nortel.

“Carrier Ethernet is still a very nascent market, and we feel testing is critical to our core customers. In Japan, it is their number-one challenge,” Alston said.