Charles Henry "Charlie" Giancarlo (born 1957) is an American entrepreneur and investor. He is the chairman and CEO of data storage company

Pure Storage Pure Storage is an American publicly traded technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States. It develops all-flash data storage hardware and software products. Pure Storage was founded in 2009 and developed its product ...

. He is a former senior executive of

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

and

Silver Lake Partners Silver Lake is an American global private equity firm focused on investments in technology, technology-enabled and related industries. Founded in 1999, the firm is one of the largest technology investors in the world. Its investment holdings have ...

Education and career

Giancarlo holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

, a master's degree in electrical engineering from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, and an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. He co-founded Telecom Systems in 1984, and then Adaptive Corporation in 1988. Giancarlo joined Cisco in 1994 when it acquired Kalpana, an

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

switching company, where he was vice president. He became Cisco's first vice president of

business development Business development entails tasks and processes to develop and implement growth opportunities within and between organizations. It is a subset of the fields of business, commerce and organizational theory. Business development is the creation of ...

, where he developed Cisco's merger and acquisition strategy and practice. In 1999, he took responsibility for the commercial line of business at Cisco,. He became chief technical officer in 2003 and chief technology officer in July 2004. Giancarlo was responsible for many of Cisco's technologies including Ethernet switching,

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

, security, IP Telephony, and

telepresence Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance or effect of being present via telerobotics, at a place other than their true location. Telepresence requires that the user ...

, as well as Cisco's entry into markets such as the small and medium business and consumer markets after acquiring

Linksys Linksys is an American brand of data networking hardware products mainly sold to home users and small businesses. It was founded in 1988 by the couple Victor and Janie Tsao, both Taiwanese immigrants to the United States. Linksys products incl ...

Scientific Atlanta Scientific Atlanta, Inc. was a Georgia, United States-based manufacturer of cable television, telecommunications, and broadband equipment. Scientific Atlanta was founded in 1951 by a group of engineers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, an ...

, and

WebEx Webex by Cisco is an American company that develops and sells web conferencing, videoconferencing and contact center as a service applications. It was founded as WebEx in 1995 and taken over by Cisco Systems in 2007. Its headquarters are in San ...

. Although some analysts thought he might become chief executive after

John T. Chambers John Thomas Chambers (born August 23, 1949) is the former executive chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems. Early life Chambers was born on August 23, 1949, in Cleveland, Ohio to John Tuner "Jack" and June Chambers. His mother was a psychiatrist and ...

, Giancarlo resigned from Cisco in December 2007. In January 2008, he became a managing director and

operating partner An operating partner is a title used by venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) firms to describe a role dedicated to working with privately held companies to increase value. The role was created by large-capitalization private equity groups wh ...

at the private equity firm

. He was president and CEO of

Avaya Avaya Holdings Corp., often shortened to Avaya (), is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, that provides cloud communications and workstream collaboration services. The company's platform includ ...

from June 2008 (replacing

Louis D'Ambrosio Louis J. D'Ambrosio is an American business executive who previously served chief executive officer of Sears Holdings Corporation. Prior to that, he was president and CEO of Avaya, responsible for the overall strategy, direction and operations of ...

) through December 2008. He has a son, Andrew. After the appointment of Kevin J. Kennedy as CEO, he became chairman of the board at Avaya, while continuing to serve at Silver Lake where he served on the boards of directors of Silver Lake portfolio companies Mercury Payment Systems, and Vantage Data Centers. In 2013 he was succeeded in his role at Silver Lake by

Mark Gillett Mark may refer to: Currency * Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina * East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic * Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927 * Finn ...

. Giancarlo founded

ItsOn ItsOn was an American software company based in Redwood City, California that developed cloud computing software for enhancing the performance of mobile networks. ItsOn's software platform gave mobile network operators the ability to offer granula ...

in 2009, and was a founding investor at other ventures, including

Equinix Equinix, Inc. is an American multinational company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that specializes in Internet connection and data centers. The company is a leader in global colocation data center market share, with 240 data centers ...

Blue Jeans Network BlueJeans by Verizon is a company that provides an interoperable cloud-based video conferencing service. It is headquartered in the Santana Row district of San Jose, California. Prior to being acquired by Verizon, the company was known as "Blu ...

Coraid Coraid, Inc. is a computer data storage vendor that provides storage area network (SAN) products that use Ethernet, headquartered in Athens, Georgia. History The company was founded by Brantley Coile, who previously worked on the Cisco PIX f ...

, Big Switch Networks, Avi Networks, Soraa, Enlighted, Attivo, Exablox, Formation Data, LensVector, NetSpeed, and Virtual Instruments. In August 2017, it was announced that he would replace Scott Dietzen as CEO of

. He serves on the boards of companies such as

Accenture Accenture plc is an Irish-American professional services company based in Dublin, specializing in information technology (IT) services and consulting. A ''Fortune'' Global 500 company, it reported revenues of $61.6 billion in 2022. Accentur ...

Arista Networks Arista Networks (formerly Arastra) is an American computer networking company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. The company designs and sells multilayer network switches to deliver software-defined networking (SDN) for large datacenter, ...

Tintri Tintri, Inc. is a division of DataDirect Networks based in Santa Clara, California. Tintri provides products designed for businesses cloud computing, virtual machines (VMs), and containers. The core product line is the VMstore, a storage system ...

ServiceNow ServiceNow is an American software company based in Santa Clara, California that develops a cloud computing platform to help companies manage digital workflows for enterprise operations. Founded in 2003 by Fred Luddy, ServiceNow is listed on the ...

, and

Vectra Networks Inc. Vectra AI, Inc. is a cybersecurity company headquartered in San Jose, California. History Vectra was founded in 2010 as TraceVector LLC in New York City and was incorporated in 2012 under the name Vectra Networks. Products The Cognito pl ...

Education and career

References

Further reading