The position of CEO at San Jose-based Network General has been vacant since October 2004, when CEO Bruce Framm left. In the interim, Mike Pope has run the company as president -- a position he will continue to hold, Gibson said in an interview.

Network General is privately held and does not publish its revenues. The company employs about 650 workers and has about 13,000 customers.

Gibson, 58, lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, but plans to move to the San Jose area next summer. For 33 years he has worked with telecommunications, computing and business intelligence companies. He was chief operating officer at enterprise software provider Crystal Decisions and president of the western region of Rogers Cantel, a wireless provider in Canada.

Although he would not discuss company revenues, Gibson said that Network General is profitable and that its annual revenue is more than the total of all its competitors' combined. He included Fluke Networks, WildPackets Inc., NetIQ Corp. and NetScout Systems Inc. among the company's competitors.

The Sniffer brand, which first hit the market in 1986, is "powerful" and has grown in brand recognition to become the "Xerox of network management," he said. Even so, Network General needs to improve its marketing, he said.