| By Salvatore Genovese |
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| June 18, 2008 07:45 PM EDT |
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The new Sourcefire CEO should be very careful not to go through the same path as Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang who is now going to be fired --like Sourcefire's previous CEO until yesterday-- because he blew Yahoo's once in a life time cashing in opportunity by Microsoft.
Associated Press reported Tuesday morning that an analyst downgraded Citrix Systems Inc. Tuesday after the information technology company said its head of sales is departing, raising concerns about risk and growth prospects.
Late Monday the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., company said that John C. Burris, 53, senior vice president of sales and services, will become chief executive at Sourcefire Inc., a company that makes network security products and information management systems.
"We believe Mr. Burris is unfortunately departing at a critical juncture for the company, which raises the risk profile in the near term," Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. analyst Daniel Ives said in a note to clients.
Ives cut his rating to "Market Perform" from "Outperform" and his price target to $37 from $43. The new target implies he expects the stock to rise 10 percent over Monday's $33.60 close.
Burris was one of the company's "linchpins" of success, and his departure, just as the company pushes forward in the virtualization and other markets "could not come at a worse time," he said.
Virtualization software lets a single computer operate like multiple machines, allowing companies to spend less on equipment and energy in their data centers.
"Losing a Citrix sales and channel veteran like Mr. Burris raises the risk of these budding segments successfully executing according to plan," Ives said.
Shares have slipped 12 percent so far this year. A company representative was not immediately available for comment.
Open-source software firm Sourcefire Inc. has named John C. Burris its new CEO, effective July 14.
Burris, who joined Sourcefire's board in March, is head of worldwide sales and services at Citrix Systems. Sourcefire CEO Wayne Jackson said in February that he would step down, with the company saying he was leaving to pursue other opportunities.
In a statement, Sourcefire chairman Joseph Chinnici said Burris would bring to the company the discipline and inspiring leadership it needs to grow profitably. Chinnici called Burris' selection "the culmination of a thoughtful and disciplined process of succession planning."
SNORT creator Sourcefire, one of the few publicly owned open source companies, has rejected an unsolicited $7.50-a-share offer earlier this month, a total of roughly $187.4 million cash, from privately held Barracuda Networks, claiming it undervalues the enterprise security company despite the 13% premium.
Sourcefire, worth 18 bucks a share shortly after it went public last March, finally announced that it found its new CEO on June 17, 2008.
Barracuda does e-mail and web security. It uses an anti-virus open source project called ClamAV that Sourcefire now owns that is supposed to infringe a Trend Micro patent. Barracuda claims that Sourcefire’s “inaction in dealing with the looming threat of litigation from Trend Micro has had an effect on [its] stock price.”
At The Citrix Website John Burris bio read Tuesday morning “He leads the global Citrix sales and services organization, which comprises approximately 2,200 Citrix professionals and 4,500 channel and distribution partners worldwide. Since joining Citrix in 1999, Burris has implemented an innovative sales strategy that rewards value-added selling; created a team of Enterprise Relationship Managers who support large accounts; strengthened and realigned the Citrix channel organization; and aggressively expanded the company’s presence in high-growth markets across the globe. He played a key role in achieving record net revenues of $1.4 billion in FY 2007.
Burris brought to Citrix a 20-year track record of sales on four continents. At AT&T he directed customer service operations in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Washington, D.C.; led a successful turnaround of a joint venture in the UK; and served as managing director for the Asia/Pacific region. At Lucent he served as vice president and general manager for the Gulf States and Florida zones. Burris holds a bachelor’s degree in management from Marshall University and an AT&T executive MBA.”
Salvatore Genovese is a Cloud Computing consultant and an i-technology blogger based in Rome, Italy. He occasionally blogs about SOA, start-ups, mergers and acquisitions, open source and bleeding-edge technologies, companies, and personalities. Sal can be reached at hamilton(at)sys-con.com.
