The WLAN Departure Lounge

SAN FRANCISCO -- CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment Show 2005 -- It is another busy week for arrivals and departures in the enterprise wireless LAN industry.

Unstrung is in San Francisco at the moment, where we hear tell that ex-Airespacer Jeff Aaron recently left his post at Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) to work with some old friends at a WAN application acceleration startup called SilverPeak Systems Inc.. SilverPeak was launched last week by self-styled "industry veterans" from Cisco, Turnstone Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: TSTN), and others.

"I am sad," says Alan Cohen, senior director of product management for Cisco's wireless networking business unit tells us. "It's like seeing my oldest son go off to college. I know he is ready for the world, but I still worry."

After marketing VP Ben Gibson left 802.11 startup Meru Networks Inc. for Cisco last Friday, the firm has turned around this week and says it is hiring former Cisco senior engineering director Om Tiku. Mister Tiku will be vice president of engineering for Meru and will be pushing the startup's work on wireless VOIP.

"Roads lead to and from Cisco," notes a Meru spokesperson in an email to Unstrung. (See Meru Veep Goes Cisco-Side.)

Meanwhile metro-mesh contender Tropos Networks has hired Ellen Kirk, late of Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq: QCOM), to its executive lineup. Kirk was VP of business development in the CDMA Technologies division of Qualcomm. Tropos says she will bring "carrier market experience" to Tropos, which is currently competing for a number of municipal network deals.

If you know of more executive moves, or large-scale hirings or firings, why not drop a line to [email protected]?

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung

(0)  |