Cisco Systems Inc.’s chief technology officer, Charles Giancarlo, will take charge of engineering at the company as chief development officer, the company announced this month, along with other executive changes that will take effect at the end of its fiscal year on July 31.
The moves will take place as current Chief Development Officer Mario Mazzola and two other high-level executives — Senior Vice-Presidents Luca Cafiero and Prem Jain — retire from the company. All three joined through Cisco’s acquisition of Crescendo Communications in 1993, said Cisco spokesman Rob Barlow.
Giancarlo will step down from his job as chief technology officer, in which he worked with customers and acted as a technology evangelist, and become responsible for setting the San Jose company’s technology direction and running its engineering functions, Barlow said. He will remain a senior vice-president of Cisco and president of Cisco-Linksys LLC, the company’s small-business and home networking arm. Giancarlo will report to President and Chief Executive Officer John Chambers. The chief technology officer job will become an open position, and Cisco has not chosen an internal successor or announced an external search, Barlow said.
At the same time, Cisco will create a Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group, consolidating data centre technologies such as storage, caching and virtualization that have been spread across the company and bringing them together with security products and the Catalyst 6500 series high-end switches. Jayshree Ullal, currently senior vice-president of the Security Technology Group, will head the new group. Ullal will take over some responsibilities from Cafiero, who ran the storage, high-end switching and wireless groups.
Mike Volpi, now senior vice-president of Cisco’s Routing Technology Group, will take on new responsibilities he previously shared with the retiring Jain. Volpi will become senior vice-president of the service provider group and routing technology group. The newly formed service provider group will include technologies such as core routing, service provider voice products and mobile wireless gear, as well as an optical group that has been overseen by Mazzola.
Cisco’s Wireless Technology Group, which has been led by Cafiero, will be combined with the mid-range and stackable Ethernet switch lines to form the Ethernet Systems and Wireless Technology Group, to be headed by Kathy Hill.
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