Cisco has named a former executive with rival Juniper Networks as the new chief technology officer for its mobile business.
Paul Mankiewich will serve as the CTO for service provider mobility in Cisco’s Mobile Internet Technology Group.
He joins Cisco from Juniper, where he handled end-to-end network architecture and the installation of Juniper’s products into operators’ networks. Before Juniper, Mankiewich spent more than a decade in various CTO roles at Alcatel-Lucent.
Mankiewich’s responsibilities will divide his time between New Jersey, where he lives with his family; Cisco’s headquarters in San Jose, Calif.; its Massachusetts mobility division; and its facilities in India.
Cisco recently went on the offensive against Juniper, calling out the smaller competitor for over-promising and under-delivering on several products. Juniper denied the claims.
In August, Cisco nabbed six executives from Juniper, including Neal Oristano, who was named vice president of global service provider market segment sales at Cisco.
Cisco is coming out of a major restructuring as it works to re-focus on its core routers and switches business.
The network gear provider is in the process of cutting 6,500 employees from its payroll, and it said in July that it was selling one of its factories to China-based manufacturer Foxconn. The cuts will help Cisco achieve a $1 billion reduction in its fiscal 2012 operating expenses.