Cisco announced the move Monday evening. Yen will jump from Juniper's next-generation data fabric to the corresponding products at Cisco, taking over Cisco's Server Access Virtualization Technology Group. That unit includes the Nexus product line and the Unified Computing System (UCS) architecture.
There's more. Yen is replacing a trio of Cisco celebrities: Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain and Luca Cafiero. They'll be shifting to advisory roles at Cisco.
Yen will report to Padmasree Warrior and Pankaj Patel -- who, as of this month, are jointly running Cisco's engineering organization. (See Cisco Cuts Down on Councils.)
Why this matters
This looks like quite a coup for Cisco, assuming Yen wasn't dismissed for setting fire to a Juniper building or something. QFabric is part of a series of ambitious technologies rolled out by Juniper this year, representing a bold leap for the company, and Yen has been the face of the technology since back when Juniper wouldn't tell us what it was. One has to assume Juniper wouldn't let him go easily.
Mazzola, Jain and Cafiero should all be familiar names. They've made a habit of leaving the company and getting acquired back via spin-in startups, as they did with Nuova in 2008 and Andiamo in 2002.
For more
Here's the tale of Juniper's QFabric, formerly called Stratus.
- Cisco Counters Fabric Challengers
- Considering QFabric
- How Q-ute! Juniper's QFabric Rethinks the Data Center
- Juniper Gets 'New' With Data Centers
- Juniper Takes Over the Network
- Juniper Strikes at the Data Center
- Cisco Dreams of Data Center Unity
- The Spin-In Lottery
- Is Nuova Needling Cisco's Brass?
- Ullal Calls It Quits at Cisco
- Cisco Wraps Up Nuova
- Andiamo Crew Reunites With Cisco
- Cisco/Andiamo Vets Try Something 'Nuova'
- Cisco Names Data Chief
- Cisco Buys Andiamo Finally
- Cisco's Creative Andiamo Options
- Cisco Buys Andiamo
- Cisco Owns Up to Andiamo
— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading
Cisco has continued to produce superstars but has lost them at a high rate to competitors and even as a back-fired early retirement program last time. Interestingly after the last early retirement offering John Chambers said he wouldn't do it again because Cisco lost too many talented people and it hurt the business--- hmmmmm?
With regards to this talent acquisition, I think it is a great move to aid the Nexus line.