CEO of Cisco rival eyed for top Yahoo! spot

Juniper's Johnson under consideration as Bartz's replacement

Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson is reportedly being eyed by the Yahoo! board as a possible CEO candidate. AllThingsDigital posts that the leading candidate for the vacant post is Hulu's CEO, Jason Kilar, but that Juniper's Johnson and online advertising entrepreneur Brian McAndrews are also under consideration.

Yahoo!'s corner office has been gathering cobwebs since the dismissal of Carol Bartz in September. Johnson was at Microsoft when the software giant attempted to purchase Yahoo! Indeed, Johnson was instrumental in those efforts.

The acquisition attempt was halted and soon after, Johnson landed at Juniper as successor to then-CEO Scott Kriens. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Yahoo! got a little bit cozier by entering into a search engine partnership.

Perhaps Yahoo! is looking to reignite Microsoft's interest again by contemplating Johnson's captaincy. Certainly, the terms and conditions of Microsoft's attempt to acquire the MySpace of search engines are still fresh in his mind. And Yahoo!'s mind is certainly on some fresh blood, according to ATD:

...the idea of bringing in said fantasy leader to perhaps finally be the one to revive the long-troubled company has returned to the forefront of action, according to numerous sources both inside and outside the company.

The concept in short, said people familiar with the situation: Hire some compelling and entrepreneurial CEO to get the company moving again from a product point of view, do a massive organizational overhaul...

That's why Kilar is at the top of the list, according to ATD: At Hulu, he built a compelling product with a focused, tight-knit team... something sorely needed now at Yahoo! to spur innovation and encourage loyalty.

Speaking of tight-knit, Cisco has attracted a Juniper engineer back to the company to be its service provider chief architect. According to Light Reading, David Ward, Juniper's CTO of its platform services division, has returned to Cisco to orchestrate its service provider product strategy. Ward had been an architect on Cisco's IOS XR, the operating system running the CRS series of core routers.

Ward will report to Pankaj Patel, the senior vice president who's co-leading Cisco's engineering group, Light Reading reports. Kelly Ahuja will continue to lead Service Provider Mobility, as of last week's reorg, but it could not be learned at posting if Ward's appointment affects Surya Panditi, who was just tapped to head up Service Provider Networking.  

UPDATE: Cisco says all three report to Patel. Ward is taking duties formerly held by Ahuja, as well as his staff. Ahuja will lead Cisco's Mobile Internet Technology Group. 

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• Personnel
• Router
• Juniper Networks
• Kevin Johnson
• Yahoo!