With Tony Bates gone to Skype, Warrior adds a third title to her business card.
When Padmasree Warrior left Motorola back in 2007 to take the job of Chief Technology Officer at Cisco Systems, I had to laugh at blogger Brad Reese’s characterization of her. He wrote, “Why on earth would John Chambers hire as Cisco CTO an individual who has been so badly beaten by Apple and Steve Jobs?” Now she is adding another title of Senior Vice President and General Manager position over Cisco’s Enterprise, Commercial and Small Business Development Group.
It makes one wonder if the CTO position at Cisco is another “deadwood” position?
People say that the GM position is the most important at Cisco. So I have to ask, why give it to Warrior? During her tenure at Cisco, they have lost market share in routing and switching, John Chambers admitted. Instead we see the rise of HP ProCurve and Juniper, plus others. And that’s just routing and switching. Some would say that as a CTO she should have been more inventive to gain market share, others say that is was Former Cisco executive Tony Bates who was responsible for the market loss. (Bates has just been tapped to lead Skype and Skype has just announced a partnership with Cisco rival Avaya.)
I say it’s not wise to have a CTO who really did not fit in as the CTO and then to put her in charge of a large portion of Cisco’s business. Chamber must not really think too much of the CTO position at Cisco if he is going to allow Warrior to keep her old position as well as the new one.
He should find some young bright American who understands routing and switching, businesses solutions and competition then make that person CTO. Cisco does not need someone who just reads power points; the company needs someone who will take the fight to Juniper and HP. But I doubt Chambers will do that. Perhaps he wants a good foot soldier that will not cause waves, but that’s not a good way to keep market share.
People want to look up to the Cisco CTO as a god, one who knows all and can talk technically in depth about anything. Smarter than any CCIE or CCDE, unfortunately Cisco does not have that CTO yet.
