Cisco Honors Employee Innovators with 2003 Pioneer Technology Awards
August 28, 2003
By Jenny Carless, News@Cisco
Cisco Systems recently announced the winners of its 2003 Pioneer Technology Awards, which recognize teams within Cisco that drive development in the critical areas of product innovation and core technical innovation. These two classes of awards were developed in 1999 with a dual purpose: to reward risk takers within the company who develop innovative in-house technologies; and to help in the development and successful deployment of products that have, or will have, a strong impact on Cisco leadership in new and emerging markets.
A Tradition of Innovation
The spirit of innovation at Cisco traces itself back to the company's founders, a group of computer scientists who used routers to connect the first computer networks. That spirit is still alive and well today, as is evidenced by the company's continued aggressive investment in R&D (more than $3 billion in FY 2003), the number of technical staff (12,000+ engineers worldwide), and the stiff competition for these coveted awards.
Because this attitude of technical innovation and entrepreneurship is intrinsic to the company's culture and success, the Pioneer Awards have special meaning at Cisco. Pioneers are individuals and teams whose passion, leadership, teamwork and perseverance go far beyond established trends, practices and current ideas.
"This year we received many exceptional nominations with many great characteristics, and we look forward to their continued progression," says Mario Mazzola, senior vice president and chief development officer. "In selecting the winners, we kept a keen eye on potential for viability, customer benefit, and commercial success. Our winners have demonstrated that strong potential."
Intelligent Ethernet Switches
The 2003 winner in the Product Innovation category is the Catalyst 3750 team, responsible for the Catalyst 3750 Series intelligent Ethernet switches. This team, led by David Yen and Murali Duvvury from the Desktop Switching Business Unit (DSBU), designed a new 32 Gbps dual counter-rotating ring architecture that significantly increases the capabilities of stackable switches. It is designed for enterprise closet, branch and commercial networks.
"The Catalyst 3750 Series is revolutionizing the capability of stackables through StackWise stacking technology," explains team member Geetha Dabir. The StackWise technology allows up to nine individual Catalyst 3750 Series switches to be stacked into a single logical unit, for a total of 468 ports.
The Catalyst 3750 Series architecture is designed to switch instantaneously to the second ring if the first ring fails, helping to ensure continuous operation. Because all the data in the stack traverse the ring architecture, switches can be added or deleted from the stack without disruption.
The Catalyst 3750 Series Switch provides unified management capabilities and high availability at a very low cost. This benefits the customer by reducing the overall cost of ownership of its network.
Ultra-High-Speed Signaling
This year's winner in the Core Technology category is the Ultra-High-Speed Signaling and Ultra-High-Speed Backplane Design (UHS) team.
In a true cross-functional effort, this group includes members from the Carrier Core and Multiservice BU (CCMSBU), the Internet Systems BU (ISBU) and the DSBU. Yuval Bachar, CCMSBU, and Sergio Camerlo, ISBU, acted as team leads. The UHS team designed an ultra-high-speed backplane, high-speed chip-to-chip interfaces and an interconnect component for backplanes and boxes based on an original microwave design methodology. This innovative technology is also backwardly compatible.
For the customer, this new technology introduces dramatic increases in system capacity while delivering significant decreases in cost per switched gigabit per second.
"Cisco's culture of risk taking and technology pioneering is key to the success of the ultra-high-speed signaling," says Yuval Bashar. "It's only because of this culture that the engineers on these teams were empowered to go again and again and break the technology 'limitations,' thereby introducing these innovative signaling techniques. That, in turn, helps Cisco maintain its industry leadership position."
Valued Recognition
All the pioneers who have been recognized over the past five years have led Cisco into new technology territories and greater financial success. By rewarding risk takers and overachievers, Cisco continues to promote role models within its engineering organizations and preserves the company's spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Competition for the awards is stiff, with a rigorous internal review process. The Pioneer Advisory Committee, which is responsible for reviewing all submissions and selecting award recipients, includes top level managers and engineers representing both the technical and marketing expertise within Cisco.
Over the next few weeks these two teams will be honored at a series of activities, including the Pioneer Awards Dinner, scheduled to take place on September 18, 2003. At this event paying tribute to the winning team members and their guests, Cisco CEO and President John Chambers and other senior staff members will recognize the achievements of these talented engineering teams and celebrate their successes.
Jenny Carless is a freelance writer based in Santa Cruz, CA.