Warrior to take up strategy fight for Cisco as Hooper departs

Padmasree Warrior given reins of vendor's acquisition and product strategy in addition to CTO role

Cisco continues to shuffle its executive deck with news that chief technology officer Padmasree Warrior (pictured) is also to take on responsibility for the vendor's strategy, as Ned Hooper departs.

Hooper spent 13 years at the networking monolith and has held roles including vice president of corporate business development, head of Cisco's consumer business and a role spearheading Cisco's entry into the packet telephony local services market.

He is now leaving his current role as chief strategy officer to form an investment company. In a blog post marking his departure, Cisco chief executive John Chambers saluted the role Hooper has played in managing the vendor's many acquisitions.

"Ned pioneered the model for large-scale M&A at Cisco and drove significant transactions for the company such as Tandberg, WebEx, Airespace, Starent and NDS," writes Chambers. "Additionally, he has managed our $2bn investment portfolio with both strategic and financial returns to the company."

Ned's brief is now being handed to Warrior, in addition to her CTO role. Meanwhile, her role as head of Cisco's engineering organisation is being wholly given to Pankaj Patel, who has served alongside Warrior as the division's co-leader for the past year.

Patel has been with Cisco for 16 years, spending the last 13 of these driving Cisco's service provider business which, according to Chambers, now represents more than a third of the vendor's product sales.

"Throughout his tenure Pankaj has delivered a significant number of products to the Cisco portfolio, addressing a wide range of customer needs," added the chief executive.

In her expanded role Warrior will take the reins of Cisco's investment and acquisition strategy and its relationships with technology ecosystem partners. She will also be "responsible for thought leadership around Cisco's products and architectures, technical talent development and recruiting".

Chambers said: "Over the past four years, Padma has established a tremendous track record of results, such as building Cisco's strategy and execution around architectures, cloud, overall technology strategy framework, and attracting and developing industry-leading technical talent. We look forward to accelerating our market position under Padma's strategic direction."

Today's announcements are the latest in a series of recent shifts in the Cisco executive team, following former Asia-Pacific head Edzard Overbeek's promotion to head of the vendor's global services business. Last week long-standing channel head honcho Keith Goodwin announced his retirement, to be replaced by public sector sales chief Bruce Klein.