Ex-Motorola CTO Padmasree Warrior moves to Cisco
By Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News -- EDN, December 5, 2007
Padmasree Warrior, Motorola Inc.’s former CTO who left the mobile phone maker this week, just days after the company’s CEO Ed Zander announced his planned departure, has moved to Cisco Systems Inc.
Warrior will take the CTO seat at the networking company, reporting to Cisco chairman and CEO John Chambers. The CTO position at Cisco has been open since July when the company promoted former CTO Charles Giancarlo to chief development officer.
"Cisco is the global leader in networking with a deep heritage in technology. I am excited at the opportunity to join a world class company poised to lead the next era of Internet evolution,” Warrior said in a statement Tuesday. “I look forward to enabling future growth together with Cisco's top talent worldwide. Cisco's customer centric culture and purposeful commitment to innovation are integral parts of my leadership portfolio.”
Warrior, 47, spent 23 years at Motorola and was named CTO in 2003. In the role, she was responsible for the company’s $4.1 billion research and development investment and lead Motorola’s global team of 26,000 engineers. Prior to that, Warrior was corporate VP and general manager of Motorola's energy systems group and corporate VP and CTO for Motorola's semiconductor products sector.
Warrior was best known for her work at Motorola in seamless mobility. She has been described as "sharp as a Razr" by the Chicago Sun Times and as “wickedly intelligent and articulate” and “an engineer at heart with a true knack for business” by the company itself. Motorola has seen a tremendous amount of turmoil in recent quarters, however, sliding to third place in the mobile phone market behind Samsung and Nokia in Q3, reporting lackluster financials, recording layoffs at the company that have cost more than $300 million in 2007, and facing a battle for control of the board from Carl Icahn, the billionaire Wall Street raider.
Meanwhile, Cisco, a company based in Internet infrastructure, has been branching out into new markets in recent years as it looked for sales growth. The company in early November reported fiscal Q1 2008 sales of $9.6 billion, up nearly 17% year over year, and saw Wall Street respond by pushing Cisco stock near its 52-week high of $34.24 after the financial report. Cisco’s stock has since slipped, coming in at $27.28 as of 11am eastern this morning, but is still a healthy distance from its 52-week low of $24.82.
"We are headed into a new era that we define as the second phase of the Internet, driven by collaboration and Web 2.0 technologies where the network becomes the platform for communications and IT,” Chambers said in the statement. “Padmasree's new role as CTO will help to develop and promote Cisco's future technology leadership. She is a technology visionary, an excellent leader with a strong industry voice and business acumen, and we are thrilled to welcome her to our leadership team."
