Rajiv Ramaswami, a Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Nortel Networks Ltd. executive from the days of huge all-optical switches, will be joining chipmaker Broadcom Corp. (Nasdaq: BRCM) to head its Enterprise Networking Group.

Broadcom announced the move yesterday. Ramaswami will join the company Feb. 1 as a vice president and general manager.

Ramaswami's resume includes some time at Tellabs Inc. (Nasdaq: TLAB; Frankfurt: BTLA), but during the dotcom bubble he worked for Xros, the infamous startup that aimed to build 1,000-port all-optical switches. Nortel bought Xros for $3 billion in stock in 2000 and Ramaswami left Nortel two years later to join Cisco's optical team. (See Xros Launches First 1000-Port All Optical Cross Connect and Nortel Spells Out Its Cross-Connect Strategy.)

Ramaswami eventually become vice president and general manager of the optical group, but he was displaced in 2005 as Cisco rethought its optical strategy. Ramaswami was moved to the Gigabit Systems business unit, described as a position of greater responsibility even though it didn't sound nearly as cool. (See Cisco Swaps Opto Jobs and Cisco Taps Cerent Vet.)

His final position at Cisco was as the vice president of the Cloud Services and Switching technology group.

source:lightreading