Cisco's rising star

Executive Charles H. Giancarlo is on the fast track at networking giant Cisco Systems.

On Thursday, Cisco announced that Giancarlo, who was promoted to the position of chief technology officer a year ago, will become the company's new chief development officer. He will be taking over the position from Mario Mazzola, 58, who is retiring.

Mazzola has been with the company since 1993, when Cisco acquired Crescendo Communications, the start-up he co-founded in 1990. It was Cisco's first acquisition.

Charles Giancarlo

Giancarlo, 47, has been with Cisco since December 1994 when his company, Kalpana, was also acquired by Cisco. During his tenure at Cisco he has served as a general manager and senior vice president. He will continue to report directly to CEO John Chambers, as he has done since he took on the CTO role a year ago.

As CDO, Giancarlo will head Cisco's overall research and development strategy and manage its entire engineering organization. He will be responsible for the development of the company's routing software, core Internet Protocol (IP) routers, Ethernet switches, network management services, optical networking equipment, storage switches, voice technologies, wireless gear, data center equipment and home networking initiatives.

In addition to Giancarlo's promotion, the company also announced a series of changes in the technology organization. Mike Volpi, senior vice president of Cisco's routing technology group, will expand his role to also oversee all service provider activity, including the optical networking and carrier voice products.

Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco's security technology group, will also expand her role by taking on responsibility for Cisco's data center products. Both Volpi and Ullal will report to Giancarlo.