Daily News Briefs

OpNext Inc. was the recipient of the Technology Supplier of the Year Award at Cisco Systems Inc.'s 10th annual supplier appreciation awards program on Oct. 15.

Phillip Arneson, formerly of Allied Signal, was named president and chief operating officer of Sorrento Networks. He replaces Jim Dixon, who resigned for personal reasons. Arneson has served on the Sorrento board since January.

Charles Mao has joined Sorrento's board as an independent director. Mao is senior vice president of sales and marketing for photonics processor-maker Avanex Corporation. He joined Avanex from MCI Telecommunications, where he was involved in the deployment into the MCI network of technologies based on dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM).

Sorrento also announced that Leonard N. Hecht has resigned as executive vice president in order to pursue other business interests. An expert in the financing of new technologies, Hecht helped launch Sorrento's pioneering efforts to commercialize DWDM technologies for intracity applications.