Cisco Fellow lands at Nicira

Bruce Davie to be chief service provider architect at stealthy network virtualization start-up

By Jim Duffy on Mon, 01/30/12 - 4:50pm.

The industry is awaiting the official debut of Nicira, a stealthy network virtualization start-up backed by Andreessen Horowitz, among other investors. Nicira is fresh off of landing a Cisco Fellow as its chief service provider architect, according to AllThingsD.

Bruce Davie joined Cisco in 1995. He is one of the authors of the Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) specification for traffic engineering and QoS enablement in large IP networks like the Internet, and its precursor: Cisco's Tag Switching.

Davie is also an active participant in both the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Internet Research Task Force, having authored several RFC documents on IETF specifications, as well as numerous books, articles and papers on IP networking. Prior to joining Cisco he was director of internetworking research and chief scientist at the Bell Communications Research labs, and was named a Cisco Fellow in 1998.

Davie will be in familiar company at Nicira. As ATD notes, several officials at the start-up came from Cisco, either in engineering, management or marketing disciplines. And ATD also notes that Nicira has compiled an impressive roster of thinkers behind network virtualization and IP engineering.

Davie is the latest addition.

In a separate development, see if you can make sense of this: International Business Times has what could be an interesting post on how Apple obtained the rights to the names "iPhone" and "iOS" from Cisco. It quotes from Adam Lashinsky's book, "Inside Apple," on discussions between Steve Jobs and Cisco Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer Charlie Giancarlo over those rights.

According to the post - and, apparently, Lashinsky's book - Jobs asked nicely for the rights to those names for its about-to-be-released mobile phone. He didn't offer Cisco anything, just a courteous request.

When Cisco refused, he asked again with the nudging of Apple's legal department. Cisco nudged back by filing suit once Apple released its mobile phone under the brand name iPhone. Jobs called Giancarlo again, at home, on Valentine's Day, at the dinner hour. Ever the charmer, Jobs gently asked Giancarlo if he could get e-mail at home... in 2007... with broadband Internet access...

Shortly after that, Cisco dropped its litigation and granted Apple the rights to the names iPhone and iOS. Just like that. Was it Steve Jobs' negotiating tactics? Or the Valentine's Day call at home during the dinner hour? Or Cisco's inertia in using and marketing the brand name iPhone? Or Giancarlo's shock that Jobs would ask him if he could get e-mail at home in 2007?

The International Business Times post never says, nor does it include an excerpt from the Lashinsky book that gets to the root of Cisco's decision to share the rights of those names to Apple.

What's the real reason behind Cisco's decision to give up sole ownership of those trademarks?

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