Unconfirmed rumor: Cisco Enterprise SVP Manny Rivelo bolts for Dell Force10

F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV) today announced that Manny Rivelo has joined F5 Networks as Senior Vice President, Security and Strategic Solutions. Mr. Rivelo will report to F5's president and chief executive officer, John McAdam. He joins F5 after a 19 year career at Cisco Systems, Inc., where he most recently served as Senior Vice President - Engineering Operations and Systems.

"We are very pleased to have Manny on our team here at F5," said McAdam. "He brings to F5 a strong track record of success, a keen business sense, deep engineering and operations experience, and a customer focused mindset. I'm confident that Manny will help accelerate F5's expansion in the security market and take advantage of the many new strategic opportunities we are encountering, leveraging the success of our core ADC market solutions."

Mr. Rivelo's managerial career spans over 25 years in product engineering, operations, field engineering sales and IT. He serves on the board of directors of Apollo Group, Inc., one of the world's largest private education providers. He holds a bachelor's and master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology.

The exodus of Cisco's top talent has moved into overdrive. How so?

Well, an unconfirmed rumor has Manny Rivelo, Cisco's Senior Vice President of Enterprise Systems and Operations, joining Dell's new acquisition Force10.

At Cisco, Rivelo was responsible for the daily operations and support of 24,000 Cisco engineers across 30 worldwide development centers that generated more than $40 billion of revenue.

Additionally, Manny Rivelo was famous for being one of only 3 Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts (Rivelo is CCIE #1305) to have ever been promoted by Cisco CEO John Chambers into Cisco's top management ranks (see does Cisco discriminate against its CCIEs).

Another unconfirmed Cisco executive departure:

Rick McConnell - Cisco's vice president of collaboration sales is leaving. McConnell was previously the CEO of MeetingPlace audio and web conferencing solution vendor - Latitude Communications, which was acquired by Cisco in 2003 for $80 million in cash.

Update: 10/26/2011

Confirmed:

Rick McConnell - Cisco's Vice President and General Manager of the Unified Communications Business Unit and Voice Technology Group has joined Akamai Technologies as Executive Vice President, Products and Development, effective November 1, 2011.

Cisco's borderless networks SVP Brett Galloway has left Cisco

Cohen joins Cisco alumni at network hypervisor vendor Nicira

Cisco's restructuring embeds operating committee, councils, boards and working groups deeper into Cisco's new management structure

What's your take, why do you think top Cisco executives Manny Rivelo and Rick McConnell have left Cisco?