Cisco's VP of Storage Sales Quits

Cisco Systems Inc.'s (Nasdaq: CSCO) head of worldwide storage networking sales has left the company, Byte and Switch has learned -- indicating that Cisco may be changing the sales strategy for its SAN switches.

Steve Querner, Cisco's VP of worldwide storage networking sales, says that as of today, he's still officially an employee of the company but he notes that his email and voicemail aren't functioning anymore. "We're on good terms and everything, but I'm limited in what I can say," he says.

Cisco spokesman John Noh says the company's policy is to not comment on personnel matters.

Querner, who joined Cisco about a year ago, was previously VP of the Asia/Pacific region for EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC).

His departure suggests Cisco may be scrapping its initial strategy of having an independent storage sales operation -- in part because of pushback from the company's other salespeople, according to an ex-Cisco sales representative."I heard there was a little bit of the turf war," the source says. "[Querner] was trying to stand up his own sales force, but the main Cisco sales force is pretty good."

Our source speculates that instead of having an "overlay" storage sales team, Cisco will reintegrate those functions into its larger direct sales force. "I think what they're going to do is have channel account managers," he says. "There might be a guy in New York who covers that region."

In the past few months, Cisco has gradually ramped up sales activities for its first entry into the Fibre Channel switch market. The company said it sold $10 million worth of SAN switches in the first quarter of 2003 (see Cisco Reports $10M SAN Sales).

Both Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) have begun shipping the Cisco MDS 9000 family. EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) says it's on track to start selling the switches this quarter (see Did Brocade Bungle Cisco Test?, HP Moves Hard on Cisco, EMC, Cisco Do the Deed, and Cisco Gets Set).

Todd Spangler, US Editor, Byte and Switch