14 DAY TRIAL // Cisco's executive vice president and chief development officer, Charles Giancarlo, will resign from his post as of December 31. The 50-year old executive was the second-in-command at the company and will put an end to a 14-year career with the networking expert.
According to the company CEO John Chambers, he repeatedly attempted to persuade Giancarlo not to resign, but the soon-to-be ex-vice president has already taken a job as managing director and partner at investment firm Silver Lake.
"Charlie is one of the few leaders that I lost and it wasn't the right time to lose him," Chambers said. "Sometimes because of their expertise or certain skill sets it's the right time for people to do something else. But that wasn't the case with Charlie. We will miss him."
Giancarlo was the most likely person to become the next Cisco CEO, after John Chambers would have stepped down. However, Chambers admitted earlier this year that it is not likely to leave the CEO job for at least five years now. Given the fact that he already was 50, Charles Giancarlo decided to leave the company and take up something else.
Giancarlo's decision was not taken on the spur of the moment, but carefully mulled for more than six months. "I probably took longer than I should have to make the decision," Giancarlo said. "But it's a difficult family to leave. It has been a continuous pleasure for me to work at Cisco," he added. "Not a year has gone by that wasn't just a wonderful time in my life."
Another potential CEO successor resigned earlier this year. Mike Volpi, the ex-senior vice president and general manager of the Routing and Service Provider Technology Group, left Cisco for a new TV experiment, called Joost. However, Giancarlo is not at all concerned with the new person to take the CEO chair.
"I see a number of candidates," Giancarlo said. "There are some interesting young turks coming up who will be great candidates a few years down the line."