computerwoche.de

Archiv

Nortel's CTO targets Cisco

27.06.2006
John Roese becomes chief technology officer at Nortel Networks Inc. in Brampton, Ontario, Wednesday, following his appointment to the post last week. Roese (pronounced Rose), 35, will lead more than 12,000 engineers and developers in the Nortel research and development headquarters in Ottawa and will be responsible for the company's R&D strategy and execution. Before joining Nortel, he was CTO at Broadcom Corp. for three months, and before that, he held the CTO title at Enterasys Networks and Cabletron. He talked with Computerworld about Nortel's future.

What does John Roese bring to Nortel? A technology company without a dedicated focal point for the technology community is at risk of drifting. It's extremely important that there be a CTO at a company like this to keep people on target and provide a litmus test as to whether you are moving in the right direction. When I was CTO of Cabletron, I was a Nortel partner early on, and then a competitor when Nortel bought Bay Networks. I understand the enterprise and metropolitan-area network space.

You left Broadcom after a short stint there. What changed? I was fairly happy at Broadcom. First I said no to Nortel, and then with more visibility, saw Nortel was a US$10 billion enterprise, with 12,000 R&D folks and a brand that was still in pretty good shape. There was a technology basis and engineering expertise here. Nortel is doing great things and nobody seems to know that. I saw five things that Nortel has: enterprise wireline and wireless, carrier wireline and wireless, and most important of all, application and middleware software frameworks. What I found was this company had a tremendous investment in middleware to unify those various networks.

What are the biggest things Nortel needs to improve upon? Well, two things. One, we have to behave like the company we are -- like the broad company that builds communication systems. Each silo of products is a part, but you can't just build a product in a cell and hope it works in the enterprise.

Two, we have to tell our story. CTOs are mostly about technology and part about marketing. The reality is when I went out to talk to companies, I got a good response from Nortel customers, and when I stepped outside of Nortel customers, people didn't know how big Nortel was. If we don't communicate well and claim our place, the execution will be hamstrung. Customers want choice. They need to have an alternative to the Cisco marketing machine that tells people they have no other options. We have to communicate that.

Will you be advising CEO Mike Zafirovski on potential companies to buy to improve Nortel technology? Yes. There probably are gaps in our technology. We can fill them organizationally with internal development and partnerships with IBM and Microsoft and many others. There are always opportunities to acquire, but you don't acquire without expertise like we have. Many companies don't know how to integrate new companies.