For Hooper, who was already waist-deep in corporate strategy at Cisco as senior vice president corporate development and head of its consumer division, this is quite a promotion, one that clearly suggests he’s being groomed for the CEO spot. And with former CEO candidates Charlie Giancarlo and Mike Volpi out of the picture, what’s to stop him from ascending to it? As Barclays Capital noted this morning, “The appointment cements our view that Mr. Hooper is well-regarded within Cisco and may continue to progress in the upper echelons of Cisco’s management team.”
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size. 11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
If there was any doubt that Ned Hooper is Cisco (CSCO) CEO John Chambers’s likely heir apparent, it disappeared today when the company named him chief strategy officer. 
