Seventeen-year Cisco veteran John McCool is leaving, the company confirmed to Bloomberg's Peter Burrows. He will be replaced by Tom Wilburn.
McCool was the CTO and senior VP of the Global Enterprise Segment and the "Borderless Networks" groups. These areas account for one-third of Cisco's revenues, Cisco says.
Wilburn, who has been at Cisco eight years, was formerly vice president of wireless sales at Cisco in mobility, switching and routing, according to his LinkedIn profile.
McCool could be leaving to take a position at a competitor or startup, Brent Bracelin, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, speculated to Burrows.
That would make sense. McCool had shifted roles within Cisco a handful of times in the past five years and these were considered lateral moves, a source previously told Business Insider.
McCool is well known in the network industry. He cut his teeth working with Steve Jobs at NeXT Computer. He was also part of the team that built Cisco's Catalyst switches, one of the products that catapulted Cisco into its leadership position in the network industry.
Today, Cisco is facing increasing pressures as new technologies based on software-defined networking emerge. It will be interesting to see where McCool lands and if his next project helps or hurts his former employer.
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