Had an interesting conversation earlier this week with a famous networking industry journalist and the subject of Cisco's senior executive team came up.
Remarkably, we both were wondering aloud about what the average tenure would be of the 61 executives listed on Cisco's Mount Rushmore (i.e. Cisco's executive biographies web page).
Obviously, my curiosity got the best of me and I'm proud to report that the average tenure of 59 of the 61 executives is 11.5 years, I omitted the years of Cisco service for both John Morgridge and Richard Justice because they are no longer full-time Cisco executives.
Amazingly, only two CCIEs are members of Cisco's 59 strong senior executive team, Manny Rivelo - Senior Vice President of Cisco's Development Organization Operations and Gregory Akers - Senior Vice President of Cisco Research and Advanced Development.
Furthermore, the Chairman and CEO of Cisco China - Jim Sherriff, left out of his biography the fact that he was CEO of Dallas based Stonebridge Technologies for a very short year.
The longest tenure of a current senior Cisco executive is 20 years, held by Joel Bion - Senior Vice President of Cisco's Product Resiliency Research, who is responsible for Cisco's IOS Software. I find that fact interesting because Cisco is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, so it appears not too many senior executives are around from Cisco's early days.
What's your take, are you surprised that the average tenure of a senior Cisco executive is only 11.5 years?
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There is still one member of
There is still one member of the original founding team remaining at Cisco: Kirk Lougheed, now a Fellow.
Kirk Lougheed helped Len & Sandy in their home's living room
In 1984, Stanford University engineer Kirk Lougheed helped Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner (the cofounders of Cisco) in their home's living room (199 Oak Grove Avenue in Atherton, California), write code, piece together boxes and assemble cables in order to test prototypes of new routers, often working 100 hours per week.
Home of Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, the cofounders of Cisco Systems in 1984:
Cisco began turning a profit of between $250,000 to $350,000 per month as early as 1986. So in that year Cisco moved into its first office building at 1360 Willow Road in Menlo Park, California. With that move, Kirk Lougheed quit his job at Stanford University in order to help Cisco strip Bill Yeager's original router code and improve its IP support. Lougheed also made other critical improvements that brought the software much closer to being viable as a commercial product.
Cisco's First Office Building in 1986:
In 1987, Cisco began shipping the software and hardware as a package, which they called a "cisco."
Sincerely,
Brad Reese
BradReese.Com Cisco Refurbished
Cash $ N Carry
Only 11.5 years? By today's corporate standards 11.5 years is a career. I'd say that many, many executives have ridden the Cisco wave, made boatloads of cash and went on to do something they really love. When you're the dominant player in virtually every IT sector where's the excitement of new innovation and conquest? Now it's all part of the expectations.
I Don't Know About That.
I don't think it is correct to say they are "the dominant player in virtually every IT sector". Except if your definition of "virtually" means less than 30%.
Yes, they dominate networks and their making in-roads to telecommunication and blade servers. However, that still leaves large enterprise servers, storage devices, database technology, software development (ERP, CRM,), mobile-cellular communication, satelite communication, desktops and laptops, etc... the list keeps going.
I crack up everytime someone
I crack up everytime someone uses Cisco and innovative. I don't think Cisco is innovative. I think they buy innovation. Also, the executives make a ton of cash and then leave for start-ups. Those start-ups are the innovative companies. Like everything, it's a cycle.
No innovation? Wander over
No innovation? Wander over to the IETF's site sometime. New ideas make their way into RFCs through the draft process. Cisco employees submit far more drafts than the employees of any other company.
IETF Cisco standard
Of course Cisco is going to promote IETF drafts. What better way to influence standards than by promoting what you're doing?
So you agree that Cisco is
So you agree that Cisco is "doing" something? The original poster said that Cisco was not innovative; I say what Cisco is doing, submitting IETF drafts, shows one aspect of their innovation. For anyone who disagrees, the IETF process is open to your input. Join in and make your case that what they are submitting is frivolous or wrong-headed.
If they did not submit what they are doing to standards bodies, Cisco-bashers complain that they are being proprietary and trying to lock-in customers to a Cisco-only solution. When they do submit their ideas, bashers say they are trying to dominate and steer the standards. Some people will always find fault with Cisco no matter what it does; it makes them feel like they are fighting for the underdog and sticking it to the man.
I'm looking to bash Cisco too!
Cisco Fellow - Fred Baker was IETF chair from 1996 to 2001 as well as chair of the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society from 2002 through 2006.
Baker chaired a number of IETF working groups, including Bridge MIB, DS1/DS3 MIB, ISDN MIB, PPP Extensions, IEPREP, and IPv6 Operations and served on the Internet Architecture Board 1996-2002.
He is a long time Cisco Fellow with many major contributions to the IETF and networking community writing or contributing to over 40 IETF protocols as well as holding many US patents.
Baker has been active in the networking and communications industry since the late seventies, working successively for CDC, Vitalink, ACC, and Cisco Systems.
At Cisco, he has worked at the forefront of congestion management. More recently he has focused on the migration to IPv6.
Furthermore, Baker has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society, chair of the IPv6 Operations Working Group in the IETF, a member of the Internet Engineering Task Force Administrative Oversight Committee, and a former member of the Technical Advisory Council of the Federal Communications Commission.
So I think Cisco has clearly demonstrated its credentials here.
Sincerely,
Brad Reese
BradReese.Com Cisco Refurbished
yet another BU reorg
Cisco re-orged their business units (yet again), with Tony Bates apparently the big winner, pulling in most of the revenue-generating platforms and Kathy Hill as the big loser. What details do you have?
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