The sudden and unexplained departure of Cisco data center marketing honcho, Douglas Gourlay
Cisco's vice president of Cisco data center solutions was not seen presenting at Cisco Live last week.
By Brad Reese on Mon, 07/06/09 - 11:14pm.
Update 7/7/09: Why Douglas Gourlay left Cisco in his own words
Curiously according to a source, Douglas Gourlay - Vice President of Cisco Data Center Solutions was not seen presenting at Cisco Live last week.
That's odd because Gourlay's office is located at Cisco's nearby headquarters in San Jose. And what made it even more perplexing was that Gourlay was featured just 7 days earlier in the Cisco Data Center Networks blog story:
Which had Gourlay inviting guests to Cisco Live in the following video:
Obviously, something was not right and my source suggested Gourlay had left Cisco. After contacting Cisco, I received the following reply:
"As a matter of Cisco policy, the company does not discuss individual employment matters. However, we can confirm that Doug Gourlay is no longer with Cisco and we wish him well in his future endeavors."
Make no mistake about it, Douglas Gourlay is as sharp as a tack and one of the most impressive people I've ever had the honor of collaborating with on Cisco stories for my blog.
Take the Poll - Where will Doug end up?
What's your take on why Douglas Gourlay left Cisco and where do you think he will land?
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Wow...
humbled Brad, thank you.
Yes, am taking some time off, figuring out what the next step is. In the next three months or so doing some consulting with a few companies in the valley while I explore enough options to ensure the next step is a good start to the next phase of my career. I can assure you it will be something in networking that leverages everything I learned at Cisco.
As for Cisco- I can say that I never worked with a finer group of people. I had, in my opinion, one of the best marketing teams assembled, and wish them well, and was part of some innovative and successful R&D projects with outstanding engineers. Cisco is an invigorating, challenging, and amazing environment to build a career at, and I can never say enough positive things about the people I worked with and for while employed there.
dg
I think Gartner did him in
Cisco loses again to Riverbed and two others in the Gartner report, Doug is gone.
Doubt it was the WAN Optimization space
WAN Optimization is less than 10% of his product revenue and the company as a whole is not focused there, so I doubt that is the reason for his departure.
I used to work for him and can tell you he should have left Cisco a long time ago, he's good, but now we'll get to see just how good w/o the Cisco aircover. Not many Cisco executives have easy transitions outside that wall.
He's a marketing guy
Help me get this. He's a marketing guy.
Human Band-Aid
When you're weak on technology a good marketing guy is a lot cheaper than R&D.
Doug's previous gig at Cisco
Doug was the product manager... for the Catalyst 6500.
previous gig
Doug was the PM for the Catalyst 6500 and then the Nexus line, then ran all datacenter and cloud computing marketing. Pretty hot topics right now
Adios Amigo
It's been a great haul these past few years. You have tremendously huge shoes to fill and you will be missed.
Good luck!
Been a pleasure working with and for you for the last few years - you're a legend within Cisco, I guess it is time to be one outside of Cisco too. You were single-handedly the most inspirational and inventive leader I have worked for. Good luck!
Truth be told...
...it's all about the squirrels.
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