William G. (Bill) Conlon, a former Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) executive, is being considered for a seat on the board of directors at Procket Networks Inc., Light Reading has learned.

Conlon's consideration by Procket's managers only confirms that the company is still retrenching its leadership. The move also adds fuel to the rumor that Procket has changed product strategies. If he gets the post, Conlon would replace Raza Foundries' Atiq Raza and U.S. Venture Partners' Irwin Federman, who were both on Procket's board last year but have since stepped aside.

Table 1: Procket's Board of Directors

Last week, Procket fired about 20 workers, mostly engineers, and it dismissed about 30 contract workers, according to a Light Reading report (see Is Procket Heading Toward the Edge?). Several sources in that article said that Procket had changed its plans to build a core router and is now building an edge router.

On Wednesday, Brad Kashani, Procket's vice president of global support and services, sent an email to Procket's founders, Tony Li and William Lynch, and several members of Cisco's executive staff, announcing that Conlon was being considered for a board position at Procket, according to a source who forwarded what is believed to be the original email to Light Reading.

The email note, written as an introduction, says that Conlon retired from Cisco a few months ago and reported to Doug Allred, Cisco's senior vice president of customer advocacy, at the time of his departure.

The titles Conlon held at Cisco included VP of Worldwide Sales Finance (1996), VP of Market Development (1999), and, his most recently held title, Senior VP of Customer Advocacy.

A spokesperson for Procket said the company had no comment regarding its board or product plans. A Cisco spokesperson confirmed that Conlon resigned from the company in September 2001.

— Phil Harvey, Senior Editor, Light Reading
http://www.lightreading.com