Given that Procket had raised $272 million in venture funding, Cisco appears to have got a bargain deal. However, the evidence suggests that Procket had lost its way. Cisco is not buying the whole company, merely select assets which include all its intellectual property and the majority of its engineering team. Cisco said it was not taking on any Procket liabilities or its products.
Though Milpitas, California-based Procket boasted a management team from companies such as AT&T, Bay Networks, Cisco Systems, Extreme Networks, Hewlett-Packard and Juniper Networks, the sudden departure in July 2003 of CEO Randall Kruep suggested friction at the top of the company.
He was replaced in January by Roland Acra, a former CTO at Cisco. The attraction of Procket is its experience in VLSI silicon design and the development of modular software.
