The announcement that Cerent Corp. and Monterey Systems were acquired by Cisco was made on the same day in August 1999, the 25th of the month, to be exact. At the time, it was also announced that Carl Russo, Cerent’s dynamic CEO, would head up a larger organization within Cisco known as the Optical Networking Group (ONG).
All of Cerent’s engineering and product management personnel joined Carl in a business unit referred to as Optical Transport (OTBU). Similarly, the Monterey engineering personnel joined a newly formed Wavelength Routing Business Unit (WRBU). The other half of the Cerent organization, comprised of sales personnel and outbound marketing folks, with a sprinkling of Monterey outbound personnel, became part of Terry Brown’s uniquely separated optical sales force within Cisco’s larger selling machine headed by Kevin Dennuccio. This organizational structure had never before been implemented by Cisco in any of its previous acquisitions.
All of Cerent’s engineering and product management personnel joined Carl in a business unit referred to as Optical Transport (OTBU). Similarly, the Monterey engineering personnel joined a newly formed Wavelength Routing Business Unit (WRBU). The other half of the Cerent organization, comprised of sales personnel and outbound marketing folks, with a sprinkling of Monterey outbound personnel, became part of Terry Brown’s uniquely separated optical sales force within Cisco’s larger selling machine headed by Kevin Dennuccio. This organizational structure had never before been implemented by Cisco in any of its previous acquisitions.
The balance of the support functions were integrated within other areas of Cisco. For example, Ron Ostrowski’s customer service support people at Cerent were folded into Joe Pinto’s organization and Leslie Renshaw’s human resources team joined Cisco’s larger HR organization.
About a year after this organizational structure was humming along and sometime during 2000, Carl left Cisco (to continue his racing career) and Terry Brown assumed the leadership role of OTBU, a dual role that Carl held in absentia. Carl, instead of continuing to be led by Kevin Kennedy and John Chambers, ultimately opted to lead Calix as CEO, another startup company established by Mike Hatfield with support from Tom Corker, both of whom left Cerent at different times; Mike in the fall of 1998 and Tom a year later in late 1999. Ajaib Bhadare, Mike’s cofounder at Cerent was one of Calix’s early stage investors.
Jayshree Ullal arrived on the scene as Carl’s replacement. She was a trusted supporter of John Chambers’ dual objectives to grow service provider business and improve the margins of the optical business. Tom Fallon, who had been supporting Carl on the internal machinations of Cisco to get more product out the door soon assumed the leadership of OTBU in Petaluma once Terry tired of the large company churn and left Cerent-Cisco to lead Caymas Systems, which he founded. Eric Clelland also followed him there, leaving his optical sales role at Cisco.
Jayshree eventually brought in Ron Martin from Fujitsu as her right-hand man—actually her stand-in puppet, which signaled the end of Cisco’s Petaluma development center for optics. She incrementally shifted all of the work performed in Petaluma to Italy (the Pirelli optical engineers were deemed to be critical retention material), India (where 3 or 4 engineers for each engineer in Petaluma could be had), and San Jose (the IP-centric mother ship).
After ONG was absorbed into mainstream Cisco (as the Petaluma site was being closed down), portions of the old Cerent team were moved into Cisco’s CRBU, then CORBU, then HERO. It was acronym soup at Cisco, but after almost selling the entire optical business unit to Ciena in the 2006 timeframe, Cisco decided to keep optical and focus on using it to support its all-optical network of the future.
About a year after this organizational structure was humming along and sometime during 2000, Carl left Cisco (to continue his racing career) and Terry Brown assumed the leadership role of OTBU, a dual role that Carl held in absentia. Carl, instead of continuing to be led by Kevin Kennedy and John Chambers, ultimately opted to lead Calix as CEO, another startup company established by Mike Hatfield with support from Tom Corker, both of whom left Cerent at different times; Mike in the fall of 1998 and Tom a year later in late 1999. Ajaib Bhadare, Mike’s cofounder at Cerent was one of Calix’s early stage investors.
Jayshree Ullal arrived on the scene as Carl’s replacement. She was a trusted supporter of John Chambers’ dual objectives to grow service provider business and improve the margins of the optical business. Tom Fallon, who had been supporting Carl on the internal machinations of Cisco to get more product out the door soon assumed the leadership of OTBU in Petaluma once Terry tired of the large company churn and left Cerent-Cisco to lead Caymas Systems, which he founded. Eric Clelland also followed him there, leaving his optical sales role at Cisco.
Jayshree eventually brought in Ron Martin from Fujitsu as her right-hand man—actually her stand-in puppet, which signaled the end of Cisco’s Petaluma development center for optics. She incrementally shifted all of the work performed in Petaluma to Italy (the Pirelli optical engineers were deemed to be critical retention material), India (where 3 or 4 engineers for each engineer in Petaluma could be had), and San Jose (the IP-centric mother ship).
After ONG was absorbed into mainstream Cisco (as the Petaluma site was being closed down), portions of the old Cerent team were moved into Cisco’s CRBU, then CORBU, then HERO. It was acronym soup at Cisco, but after almost selling the entire optical business unit to Ciena in the 2006 timeframe, Cisco decided to keep optical and focus on using it to support its all-optical network of the future.