Cisco Executive Exits For Startup

Andreas Bechtolsheim, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Gigabit Systems Business Unit, is leaving the company to join Kealia Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., startup he recently invested in, according to published reports.

His responsibilities at Cisco centered on developing network switching systems stemming from Granite Systems, the start-up he sold to Cisco for $220 million in 1996.

Bechtolsheim's work on a crude workstation at Stanford University more than 20 years ago led to the creation of Sun Microsystems when a group of computer enthusiasts from Stanford University got behind the workstation and created Sun. His co-founders at Sun included Scott McNealy, the current Sun CEO, Vinod Khosla, now a venture capitalist, and Bill Joy, who recently left Sun.

Bechtolsheim left Sun in 1995 to form Granite Systems. He is known for having been one of the first major investors in Google.