Perhaps explaining the earlier, apparently unfounded rumors about Cisco buying Skype--it turns out Skype is hiring a top Cisco executive to be its new CEO, ahead of the forthcoming Skype IPO.
Update: Cisco just announced that company CTO Padmasree Warrior will take on Tony Bates's role as SVP/GM of Cisco's Enterprise, Commercial and Small Business Development Group.
Ahhh, so that's what it was. When TechCrunch reported that Cisco was exploring the acquisition of Skype, what it actually was, was that Skype was exploring the acquisition of one of Cisco's top executives.
TechCrunch reports today that Tony Bates, senior VP at Cisco who ran the enterprise group, will take over as CEO of Skype, replacing Josh Silverman. The move makes sense, as the report points out, because the enterprise is one of Skype's primary targets for new business as it goes through an IPO.
Bates swells the ranks of ex-Cisco top execs moving to leadership positions in other enterprise communications companies. Avaya CEO Kevin Kennedy is ex-Cisco, as is Charlie Giancarlo, who ran Avaya on an interim basis before Kennedy was hired, as a representative of Silver Lake Partners. Silver Lake is the private equity firm that owns both Avaya and Skype, and which is in the midst of taking Skype public.
Bates also has experience in Cisco's service provider line of business, which will obviously come in handy as the CEO of Skype, which essentially competes with the traditional service providers.
Bates keynoted this year's VoiceCon Orlando 2010, and focused much of his talk on IME, a proposed Cisco standard for dynamic establishment of public-network session connectivity across different vendors' platforms. You can view the keynote below:
