Motorola Chief Technology Officer Padmasree Warrior traded Chicago for the San Francisco Bay Area. She has joined Cisco Systems (CSCO) as chief technology officer, San Jose based company announced today. She didn’t waste much time and has started blogging on her new Cisco blog.
Okay it is full of PR sanitized corporate speak, but having read her writings in the past I think this should be a good one to watch. I think the world of her abilities and Cisco picked up a great executive to add to their team. This move also explains why Motorola took down her blog. I am going to chat with her later today and update the post.
“For next few weeks I want to listen to what everyone at Cisco has to tell me and learn,” said Padmasree Warrior, just an hour after it was announced that she was joining Cisco Systems as the Chief Technology Officer. I got a chance to speak with her as she rushed between meetings. She declined to comment on the specifics of her switch from Motorola to Cisco.
“I have admired Cisco because of their technology leadership and their business model innovations and innovations from a larger perspective,” she said. In her mind Cisco’s apporach to global opportunities along with macro-shifts in the over communications and computing industries make her job most exciting.
Though she spent recent years at a mobile-focussed company, Warrior said that her 23-years-in-technology have given her the grounding she needs to adjust to an all-IP future. “For the longest time, communication technologies have been vertical,” she said. Video meant cable, voice meant telephone, and data translated into Ethernet. “It is all horizontal - now network is the platform,” she said.
I asked her if we are in a brave new world of COMMputing, where the lines of computing and communications have blurred to such a degree that you can’t tell the difference. Google and Amazon Web Services are perfectly good examples of this commputing movement. She agreed and promised to share more of her thoughts at a later stage - after she has settled down in the Bay Area and spent time in Cisco trenches.
Originally posted at 1.41 pm
1 trackback so far
3:29 PM PT
[...] December 4, 2007Motorola’s CTO jumps ship to Cisco Om Malik is reporting that EX Moto CTO who’s departure was confirmed today has joined Cisco in a similar role. (From GigaOm) [...]
4 comments so far
3:36 PM PT
Well,
Motorola is in the doldrums today precisely because of lack of leadership from folks like Padmashree. While it was becoming clear to everyone that the future is not just in handsets, it is in morphing into a services player (Look at steps taken by players such as Apple and Nokia), Motorola is still trying to figure out how to make RAZR3/4/5. I still remember Padmashree mocking the iPhone on her blog! Hopefully, she will do better in Cisco
7:45 PM PT
Yikes, a very different tone on the Cisco blog. Padmasree’s Moto blog was a commentary of culture, technology and other topics. It felt like “her voice”. All the Cisco blogs say posted by “Cisco PR”. Lets hope Ms. Warrior brings a little transparency.
7:40 AM PT
it’s not going to be that easy switch from mot to csco…
1:27 PM PT
When I read the note yesterday that CEO of Motorola is stepping down, one of the first thoughts that flashed my mind was, Motorola is not comptetitive technically anymore. What was that one innovative product that came out of their products/engg den in the last one year. Which in made me think, they ought to ask what their CTO is upto??
Leave a Comment