[comm]Cisco business reorganization

[Ruth Milner]

Excerpted from the InformationWeek online daily digest. May not
make any visible difference to us, just FYI ...

Ruth.
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** Cisco Reveals Major Reorganization

Cisco Systems revealed Thursday a restructuring geared to speed 
up product development and improve the efficiency of its 
engineering organization. The move also involves major management 
changes, a new business structure, and a shuffling of executive 
assignments.

Under the new structure, Cisco will centralize its engineering 
and marketing departments. In turn, the engineering practice will 
focus on 11 key technologies, which include Internet switching 
and services, network management, storage, voice, and wireless. 
The company will abandon its existing three-part business 
structure, which focused on businesses-enterprise, service 
providers, and commercial markets. 

The reorganization affects a number of execs. Kevin Kennedy, 
formerly senior VP of the service-provider business line, will 
leave the company. Mario Mazzola, formerly senior VP of the 
new-business-ventures group, will be chief development officer, 
overseeing the 11 new technology groups and reporting directly to 
CEO John Chambers. James Richardson, formerly senior VP of the 
enterprise line, will serve as chief marketing officer. 

Ron Ricci, VP of market positioning, says the requirements of 
Cisco's customers have blurred as their objectives have become 
more similar, and therefore it didn't make sense to proceed with 
decentralized engineering. Ricci says engineering teams that had 
occasionally found themselves working on parallel but unrelated 
projects will work as a single team. "It's a huge cultural 
change," he says, adding that the restructuring should 
significantly speed product development. 

Joel Conover, senior analyst with Current Analysis, says he's 
somewhat surprised by the move to centralize engineering. Conover 
says rival Nortel Networks Corp. has been undergoing similar 
changes, but has not disclosed them. He says that, ultimately, 
Cisco is trying to reverse disappointing financials. "I think 
this is a financially-driven activity," Conover says. "I don't 
think there's going to be a big effect on customers." - David M. 
Ewalt and Tony Kontzer