Cisco Reorganizes, Renames Scientific Atlanta

SA CEO Jim McDonald Becomes Advisor to Cisco Service Provider Group GM Tony Bates

By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 3/14/2008 12:26:00 PM

Cisco Systems has officially phased out the 56-year-old Scientific Atlanta name and, as part of the change, it restructured the management team for what is now called the Cisco Service Provider Video Technology Group.

Jim McDonald, who had been CEO of Scientific Atlanta since 1993, has moved out of day-to-day management responsibilities and will be “in more of an advisory role” to Tony Bates, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Service Provider Group, who oversees the Video Technology Group, spokeswoman Sara Zavala said.

McDonald will remain based in Atlanta.

Two executives are now managing the Video Technology Group, or VTG for short: Michael Harney, corporate senior vice president and president of the Subscriber Networks unit; and Dwight Duke, corporate senior vice president and president of Transmission Network Systems.

Both report to Bates and Cisco senior vice president Pankaj Patel, who also has the title of general manager for the Service Provider Group.

Zavala said no executives are leaving the former Scientific Atlanta group as part of the reorganization. At last count the group’s approximately 9,900 employees represented 16% of Cisco’s 61,535 worldwide employees at the conclusion of its previous fiscal year ended July 2007.

Cisco about two weeks ago replaced the signage at SA’s headquarters in Lawrenceville, Ga., with the Cisco logo.

In January, Cisco dropped the Scientific Atlanta name from its newest line of digital set-top boxes, as first reported by Multichannel News.

Now, all the products in the Video Technology Group will be rebranded. “Anything in the field currently with the SA brand/logo will not be replaced, but any new headends shipped [or] deployed will be Cisco-branded,” said Zavala.

Cisco took two years to retire the SA name, after completing the $6.9 billion acquisition of the company in February 2006. In January 2007, Cisco said it would phase out the brand over the next 12 months.

Scientific Atlanta, founded in 1951, used to manufacture a diverse range of products – including electronic test equipment for antennas and plastic-injection-molded food and beverage packaging – before shifting to cater to the cable TV industry starting in the early 1970s.