Former HP ProCurve vet McHugh recruited as Foundry business disappoints
Brocade this week enlisted a veteran of the Ethernet switching wars to try and right its own LAN switching ship — the one obtained for almost $3 billion with 2008’s acquisition of Foundry Networks. John McHugh, a longtime HP ProCurve marketing executive, has been tapped by Brocade as its chief marketing officer, responsible for the company’s global marketing and strategic alliance strategies.
McHugh will have his work cut out for him at Brocade. The storage networking company is currently struggling in Ethernet switching after missing revenue targets in its first quarter of fiscal 2010 due to a misaligned strategy, according to CEO Mike Klayko and investment analysts. Brocade is currently reformulating its Ethernet/IP go-to-market strategy in an effort to rebound that business.
McHugh has almost 30 years in the networking industry, 26 at HP. At HP, McHugh had been vice president and worldwide general manager of HP ProCurve, helping to build it from a start-up to a $1 billion plus business. But McHugh’s departure from HP, and the reasons for it, were a bit of a mystery…
More recently, McHugh was vice president and general manager of Nortel’s Enterprise Network Solutions business unit, the one sold to Avaya last Fall. McHugh was there less than a year but he nonetheless pined for the days when the Nortel unit was its old Bay Networks self: he espoused a back-to-the-future strategy for the unit by proposing a resurrection of its former identity in an effort to revive its enterprise networking fortunes.
He was the only one to propose that scenario however. Trouble was, Bay was already being marginalized in enterprise networking when Nortel bought it in 1998.
Prior to Nortel, McHugh was with SilverLake Partners where he worked on M&A activity, and technology and company evaluations.
More from Cisco Subnet:
This is Network World’s Cisco Subnet news alert in which we focus on the top items from Cisco Subnet, your source for Cisco news, blogs, discussion items, security alerts, giveaways and more.
Cisco said to be readying major upgrade to CRS-1The scoop on the New TSHOOT Course and ExamCisco shipping 160G Ethernet card for ASR 9000
Another analyst sees Cisco UCS deployment delays
If Cisco buys you, you’re 1 in 100
IPv4 Space is Getting Low – Really Low
Win one of 50 CCNP training books, videos and Cert Kits
Win great stuff from Cisco SubnetCisco Alert newsletter.Like RSS readers? Subscribe to the Cisco Subnet RSS feedLike e-mail? Subscribe to the
Follow all Cisco Subnet bloggers on Twitter.Follow Jim Duffy on Twitter
