Ex-Cisco engineer Randall out at Brocade

May have taken fall for bad Foundry sales in Q1

By Jim Duffy on Thu, 03/11/10 - 4:57pm.

Ex-Cisco router engineer Marc Randall is out as Brocade's senior VP of Products following the company's disappointing quarter in Ethernet switching. Sales of the Foundry gear were down 24% in the first quarter, while competitors all grew 20%+.

Randall spent seven years at Cisco as vice president of engineering, working on the company's high-end routing platforms. From 2001 to 2008 he was at Force10, retiring as CEO two months before Turin Networks merged with the company.

Brocade confirmed his departure but did not comment beyond that. But investment form UBS believes he took the fall for Foundry. In a UBS bulletin issued this week:

...we believe Marc Randall was let go. It was likely due to the weak performance of Foundry sales thus far...

Brocade acknowledged missing "assumptions" in Q1 in its go-to-market strategy for Foundry. That strategy hinges on sales to and through OEMs, which include IBM and Dell.

UBS says that channel is currently inactive:

We continue to monitor Brocade's IP OEM progress with IBM and Dell closely, and we do not find any sign of the IP OEM business ramping yet.

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