Cisco Chief Strategy Officer Ned Hooper leaves the company

Ned Hooper, Cisco's (Nasdaq: CSCO) Chief Strategy Officer, an executive who insiders hailed as the possible successor to John Chambers, is departing the router giant after serving in the role for about three years.

Hooper, who was appointed VP and Chief Strategy Officer in 2009, is being replaced by CTO Padmasree Warrior. Warrior will continue to serve as CTO in addition to CSO. Meanwhile, Pankaj Patel will take the reins of Cisco's engineering organization, a group he jointly ran with Warrior.

Among Hooper's major accomplishments during his 13-year tenure with the company was its $3.4 million acquisition of Tandberg, in addition to the yet-to-be-closed $5 billion acquisition of NDS.

This latest management shuffle is part of a wider company realignment that Cisco CEO John Chambers conducted last year to make "the business leaner and more efficient." At that time, Cisco sold off underperforming assets like the FLIP camera division and laid off 15 percent of its workforce.

"Now the time is right for us to drive the next phase of our organizational evolution," Chambers said in a blog post on Tuesday.

Brian Marshall, an ISI group analyst, agreed that the management changes are another item on Chambers' to-do list.

"In our view, (Cisco) is continuing to streamline the organization and consolidating responsibility for engineering, technology vision and strategy with two executives rather than three previously," Marshall said in a note.

For more:
- Reuters has this article

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