Cisco Confirms Massive Restructuring of Engineering Teams

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(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Networking hardware manufacturer Cisco announced on Thursday via a blog post it has made several structural changes to its engineering division, which includes streamlining the number of technology-based engineering groups and gives more power to its senior executives in video, security and data center units.

This is the latest in a series of appointments Cisco has announced in recent months. In August, Cisco named former Juniper Networks Neal Oristano its new vice president of global service provider market segment sales and Jim Labovites as vice president of North America service provider sales.

Cisco is undergoing a company-wide restructuring plan designed to eliminate the bloated $1 billion in operating expenses by the end of its fiscal 2012 and transform the company into a more streamlined organization.

The company's engineering business will now include five groups that will be further supported by five separate units called Strategic Technology Groups.

The Enterprise Networking Group will now include Cisco's Enterprise Routing, Campus Switching,WaaS and Wireless LAN groups into one unit, along with networking pieces of Cisco's Small Business team. Rob Soderbery, Cisco senior vice president, will lead the group, and Praveen Akkiraju, senior vice president, will continue to lead Cisco's Enterprise Routing and Wireless endeavors.

Cisco's Data Center group will be led by SVP David Yen, whom Cisco poached from Juniper in May. That group now includes Data Center Switching, Servers and Storage, and Load Balancing.

Cisco recently named former VMware and RSA executive Chris Young to senior vice president for security engineering.

He is now overseeing Cisco's Security and Government Group, which includes Cisco's Security Technology Group, Global Government Solutions group and Corporate Security Programs business.

Cisco senior vice president Surya Panditi is now leading the company's Service Provider Networking group, which combines the Service Provider Routing and Service Provider Mobility units.

SVP Kelly Ahuja will continue to lead the Mobility unit. Marthin DeBeer is now head of Cisco's Video and Collaboration Group, which consolidates Collaboration and Communications, Telepresence Technology, Service Provider Video Technology and Emerging Technologies groups.

Senior vice president Barry O'Sullivan retains control of the Collaboration and Communications team.

In addition to these engineering divisions, Cisco now has five Strategic Technology Groups which include Cloud and System Management Technology, recently formed and led by Cisco SVP and CIO Rebecca Jacoby, Engineering, Operations and Systems led by VP Joe Wotjal, Network Operating Software Technology Group led by SVP Ben Fathi, Silicon and Central Engineering led by VP's Bill Swift and Massimo Prati, and Research and Advanced Development led by SVP Joel Bion.

SVP`s Padmasree Warrior and Pankaj Patel will continue to be co-leads for Engineering.

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