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Cisco has been reorganizing dramatically this year, refocusing on its core strengths in routers and on growth areas like the cloud, while pulling back from devices and applications. The change of focus has ended speculation that the IP giant would become an end-to-end mobile player - it was even previously rumored to be developing a smartphone - but it still has a big role to play in cellco infrastructure and sees the mobile broadband explosion as one of its key opportunities. Now it has named a former executive with rival Juniper Networks to be the CTO for its mobile business.

Paul Mankiewich will drive technology strategy, architecture decisions and joint programs with cellcos, as CTO of Cisco's Mobile Internet Technology Group, focusing mainly on service providers. At Juniper, Mankiewich was in charge of end-to-end network architecture and the installation of products in operators' networks. Before Juniper, he had various CTO roles at Alcatel-Lucent, over the course of a decade.

Although Cisco's routers power many core networks supporting mobile RANs, it has been trying to expand into other areas of the mobile infrastructure with acquisitions like that of packet core provider Starent. It lacks the depth of cellco contacts and expertise of some of its arch-rivals, like Alcatel-Lucent, though and one of the tasks of its various CTOs will be to import such knowledge.

Cisco has been changing the role of the CTOs - of which it has one per business unit plus the overall CTO Padmasdree Warrior - to be more focused on marketing and customer alliances, rather than just strategy. Mankiewich will be charged with making the operators more aware of Cisco's innovations and how they will drive products over the coming years, and will spend more time influencing potential clients than internal business units.

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