Genband is combining its sales and marketing groups under one executive -- Mark Pugerude -- and has let go an undisclosed number of employees during the transition, Light Reading has learned.

Pugerude's new title is president of global sales and business development; he came to Genband via the acquisition of NextPoint Networks in 2008.

The sales and marketing activity helps explain why, sometime during the past few weeks, Pablo Gargiulo, formerly Genband's president of global sales, left the company.

Genband CEO Charlie Vogt was contacted by Light Reading, but he didn't want to discuss headcount. Corporate layoff message boards pegged the cut at 20 percent but, of course, that's just Internet gossip. So don't you dare believe it.

"Our focus for the past 18 months has been on getting the integration of our acquisitions right," Vogt told Light Reading. "Now we're looking at a more effective way to focus on our Tier 1 customers."

Genband, which generated about $145 million in revenues in 2008, says its 2011 revenues were around $710 million.

Why this matters
Genband has a lot of moving parts, but we see its business as falling into two big areas. First, Genband gives service providers all the help and gear they need to transform legacy central offices into next-generation data centers. At same time, Genband provides enterprises a way to blaze a path toward unified IP communications using its session border controllers, application servers and related software.

The point is that Genband is evolving as it takes care of a base of legacy switching businesses and expands into new markets. That sort of change, almost two years after a major Nortel-related acquisition, requires a restructuring somewhere along the way. (See Genband Bids $282M for Nortel's VoIP Unit.)

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— Phil Harvey, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading