Cisco Watch: Brain drain or permanent vacation?
By Phil Harvey
Redherring.com, August 18, 2000
First Estrin. Then Listwin. Could Fox, Ullal, or Mazzola be next?
Not exactly. But when this column explored the possibility of a Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) brain drain last week, we received a few tips on some other senior Cisco staffers that were thought to be heading out to pursue other opportunities.
Around the halls of Cisco one thing that helps stoke such speculation is when a senior executive seems to be gone for an unusually long amount of time. It may be they've left for good. Or they may be taking some "personal time off" (or PTO, in Cisco-ese).
In other tech firms, most notably Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), when certain senior staff take extended vacations they generally don't come back. So perhaps it's understandable that when we asked who might be next to leave from Cisco, we got a few notes pointing out that Jayshree Ullal, vice president and general manager of Cisco's enterprise line of business; Keith Fox, Cisco's VP of corporate marketing; and Mario Mazzola, former head of Cisco's enterprise line of business, hadn't been seen on campus in quite a while.
But none of these folks have left Cisco, according to a Cisco spokesperson. In fact, they are all either on a leave of absence or they're taking some much-deserved PTO. (As an aside: we hear Cisco gives new employees four weeks of accruable PTO per year.)
Isn't it odd, though, that when we spoke with Cisco customers and vendors, they gave a completely different account of an executive's employment status than did the Cisco spin machine? By one Cisco vendor's recollection, for instance, Ms. Ullal left the firm some six months ago.
"She may be on vacation but someone is doing her job," our source said. "Or maybe some of their executives just called in rich."
Hmmm. Could be. But then we read in a Reuters wire story dated August 17 that Ms. Ullal was presiding over a press conference in India marking the occasion when Cisco announced it would invest $150 million in its Indian technology development center over the next two years.
Cisco's business partners think Ms. Ullal has flown the coop. Cisco's PR wizards insist she's on vacation. And all the while Ms. Ullal is sealing deals in India? Perhaps what's really going on at Cisco is they've discovered how to clone their top executives.
We were also piqued by the rumor about Mario Mazzola's departure. Mr. Mazzola, who joined Cisco when it acquired Crescendo Communications in 1993, has been a fixture on the senior executive staff since he helped create the company's local area network (LAN) switching business.
Cisco announced on February 2 that Mr. Mazzola would be hanging it up on June 1. But June came and went and, save for a few more rumors about a retirement party in his honor, he never did permanently clear off his desk.
Mr. Mazzola couldn't be reached for comment this week and isn't expected back at Cisco until the end of this month, when he will apparently be working on a new project that's still in the hush-hush mode. As details about Mr. Mazzola's new job come forward, we'll spill them here. In the meantime, if you know of any other Cisco brass that are MIA, drop us a line at ciscowatch@redherring.com.
SPREADING OUT THE STORAGE BETS
Cisco executives have always maintained that the firm's biggest competition comes not from large equipment makers such as Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU), but from startups who are developing new technologies.
So how does Cisco stay ahead of the curve? In the storage area networking business it has accomplished this by helping fund and manage some of the startups it will be competing against. Depending on how you look at it, this is either a brilliant bet-hedging strategy, or an entire technology sector rife with conflicts of interest.
Until recently, Fibre Channel was the primary technology used to connect storage area networks (SANs) to each other and to corporate computer systems. But thanks in part to the pressing need for many companies to have SANs located in remote locations across the country, Internet Protocol-based systems have made headway in the SAN universe.
Cisco's recent acquisition of one storage-over-IP vendor, NuSpeed, helped draw the industry's attention to this emerging technology. That acquisition also helped do some indirect advertising for other Cisco-affiliated storage-over-IP startups.
Nishan Systems, NuSpeed's most high-profile competitor, won't publicly say whether it has received any investments from Cisco, but when you look at who's on Nishan's board of directors, it appears that Nishan and Cisco are closely aligned.
Nishan has confirmed that Ms. Ullal, the "vacationing" vice president and general manager of Cisco's enterprise line of business; James Gibbons, the Stanford University professor that serves on the boards of Cisco and Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT); and Barry Eggers, the Weiss, Peck & Greer general partner who was previously Cisco's director of business development, are all active board members.
We were able to reach Nishan CEO Aamer Latif via email, but he said he's on vacation and can't talk until he returns.
Another interesting firm in this area is SAN Valley Systems, a company that closed a $25 million second round of funding in July. SAN Valley's investors include Cisco, Agilent Technologies (NYSE: A), Moore Capital, Vertex Management, Upstart Capital, and Innovacom Venture Capital. Its board members include Andreas Bechtolsheim, the Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) cofounder that came to Cisco when his startup, Granite Systems, was acquired in September 1996.
To be fair, NuSpeed, Nishan, and SAN Valley aren't the only startups in this space. Redherring.com has heard of at least two more firms in the area -- SAN Castle Technologies and Pirus Networks -- and there are probably others flying below the radar as well, all with differing technological approaches.
Does the very existence of such firms pose a threat to established Fibre Channel players such as Brocade Communications Systems (Nasdaq: BRCD)? Not at first. For such firms to gain share in the market, several things need to happen, says Greg Reyes, president and CEO of Brocade. To name a few, the industry needs to decide on an SCSI over IP standard, 10-gigabit Ethernet technology must be solidified, and TCP must be made to execute on silicon instead of software.
In the meantime, Cisco's technology licensing arrangement with Brocade helped quell Brocade customers' concerns about the long-term viability of Fibre Channel technology, Mr. Reyes says. Brocade, too, is interested in helping develop some of the early-stage storage-over-IP startups, particularly because most of them have developed ways to connect existing Fibre Channel SANs with IP-connected SANs. (Brocade is also on a bit of a roll itself, as its recent positive financial release caused a sharp spike in its stock price Thursday.)
Mr. Reyes, in fact, acknowledged that if Cisco had not bought NuSpeed, Brocade was prepared to participate in that company's next funding round.
In any case, as Cisco gets its hooks in the nascent storage-over-IP space, startups and investors remain cautiously optimistic. "When a giant like that jumps in, it validates the whole space," says Rick Walsworth, SAN Valley's vice president of marketing. "When you're dancing with an elephant, you've got to watch out that you don't get stepped on."
BATTLE OF THE BAND NAMES
During last week's screed about how Cisco is spinning the delay of its Monterey router, we humbly suggested that "Carl and the Components" would be an excellent name for a Cisco-staffed rock band.
As expected, our rockin' readers also had suggestions as to what to name a Cisco-based band of musical misfits.
Many of the suggestions (such as "Cisco Ducks," "Cisco John and the Routerettes," "The Router-Rooters," "The Switch Hitters," "Mike Volpi and the Acquisitions," and "Hub Cats") were pretty amusing. Some names (such as "The Cisco Kids," "The Panchos," "Cisco Kid and The Banshees," and "Duncan and the Donuts") were less so.
Anyway, we appreciate all the entries and will be awarding four weeks of PTO to everyone who responded. To claim your prize, just call Cisco's public relations department and ask when Jayshree Ullal is coming back from vacation.
If they give you a straight answer, drop us a line at ciscowatch@redherring.com. |
