A pipe dream of a meglomanic CEO.
A little CPQ history - this was not an EP 'dream', it was Gary Stimac's idea. Stimac bought in on a plan by a guy named Doug Pushard (identified in the article). Pushard was a director level business planning guy (not a VP at the time) with no operational experience. He did a deal with CSCO to get access to some of their IOS technology, and put together the Networth / Thomas Conrad deals to get a customer base. This did not happen in '94, it was put together in '95 and announced at the 1995 'innovate' conference.
Puchard was in way over his head. He had no technical management skills and his people had no confidence in his ability to lead. Stimac left CPQ in mid-'96 and John Rose took over the enterprise operations. The 'network division' had gone nowhere and was digging a hole for itself fast. Rose had no use for the network business plan, and proposed at that time that the groups should be folded in to other product groups. Rose canned Pushard within weeks of taking over.
Alan Lutz was brought in by EP to try and take the group in a different direction, using his Telco connections. Network products became a 'product group' under Lutz, reporting to EP. Lutz also could not figure out how the business fit into the overall CPQ plan, and EP bagged him out after about 8 months.
After the DEC merger, B.J. Johnson, a highly respected engineering manager and VP from DEC, was given the task of figuring out what to do with the networking team, reporting to Rose. Based on today's announcement, I think his recommendation was to follow the original Rose plan - fold the networking capabilities into the product groups. |
