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Charles Giancarlo Biography
A twelve-year veteran of Cisco, Chief Development Officer Charles Giancarlo is responsible for the overall strategy and execution of Cisco technology development. Under his leadership, over 16,000 engineers are innovating in many different areas to advance communications technology. The technologies under Giancarlo’s direction include emerging technologies, unified communications, digital video, wireless networking, routing, switching, security, storage networking, and network management. Cisco technology teams are developing solutions for the enterprise, service provider, small and medium business, and consumer market segments.
In another significant role, Giancarlo is President of Cisco-Linksys, LLC, an independent division of Cisco providing wired and wireless products for the high growth consumer and SOHO networking market. Cisco-Linksys is the home networking leader, with revenues of close to $1 billion. Linksys is expanding its business internationally and among Service Providers, as well as continuing to build market share among the company’s core users.
Giancarlo has co-chaired the Cisco Enterprise Business Council and also run the Cisco Service Provider Council, developing and executing Cisco’s business strategies for these important customer segments.
Earlier at Cisco, Giancarlo ran the Commercial Line of Business, developing leading-edge high volume networking products and driving Cisco brand awareness among companies of all sizes. During his tenure, Cisco’s stackable switching and access routing revenue and market share grew significantly and Cisco led the industry with award-winning wireless LAN and stackable Layer 3 Ethernet switch introductions.
Giancarlo’s first assignment at Cisco was Vice President of Business Development, where he successfully developed Cisco’s merger and acquisition strategy and practice. In this position he played an instrumental role in Cisco’s first 18 acquisitions and 20 investments. He then moved on to become Senior Vice President of Global Alliances, building the organization responsible for developing an ecosystem of strategic alliances with companies such as IBM, Accenture, Microsoft and Sprint to enable the Internet industry worldwide.
Giancarlo came to Cisco through the acquisition of Kalpana, Inc., the pioneer in Ethernet switching, where he was Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Development. He was also a cofounder and Vice President of Marketing for Adaptive Corporation, which developed the industry’s first Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) product for the LAN market.
Previously, Giancarlo founded four companies in communications equipment, successfully selling two of them to larger companies. He was an early developer of both ATM and Switched Ethernet technologies which now represent a market exceeding $15 billion annually. He also holds multiple patents in the areas of ATM and voice technologies. In 2007, he was named to Network World’s list of the “Top 50 Most Powerful People in Networking” for the fourth year in a row.
Giancarlo holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Brown University and the University of California at Berkeley, respectively, and an MBA from Harvard.