Saturday, April 16, 2011

Juniper grabs another Cisco exec


Cisco lost another executive this week, and another one to Juniper. Cisco's rival named Nawaf Bitar as senior vice president and general manager, emerging technologies
Bitar had been vice president of engineering and operations for Cisco's security technology business unit. He led the development of the company's security and anti-spam product lines. Bitar joined Cisco with its 2007 acquisition of IronPort Systems where he had been senior vice president of engineering. 
Several executives have left Cisco recently since the company disappointed Wall Street with recent quarterly results. The company is in the midst of a makeover as it attempts to boost profits and cut expenses by refocusing on its core strengths in routing and switching. 

Cisco's consumer business coughed up the most high profile departures of late. Daniel Scheinman, head of Cisco's media and entertainment business, resigned this week after Cisco slimmed down its consumer business by 550 people. Scheinman's Eos operating system was broken apart and given to other areas of the company. 
Jonathan Kaplan resigned as head of Cisco's consumer business after that operation was down 15% in Cisco's second quarter. Kaplan, the CEO of Pure Digital when Cisco bought the company two years ago, probably foresaw the shutdown of his Flip videocam.
Debra Chrapaty just left as Cisco's collaboration software chief to be CIO of social gamer Zynga. And a handful of sales and marketing executives have left recently, including Luanne Tierney, who went to Juniper to head global partner marketing.
Back to Bitar, he will report to Mark Bauhaus, Juniper's  executive vice president and general manager, device and network services. Bitar will lead Juniper's emerging technology initiatives, which might include the incubation lab the company is operating.

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