Four months after the appointment of Satya Nadella as Microsoft’s CEO, rumors are swirling that another major technology company is gearing up for a leadership shakeup that could prove no less significant for the industry. A new report by veteran analyst and theCUBE alumnus Scott Raynovich claims that Cisco, the world’s largest maker of data center networking equipment, is putting the finishing touches on a sweeping  reorganization plan that will see long-time head John Chambers step down in the foreseeable future.

It’s a matter of when, not if Chambers will give up the reins, according to Wikibon senior analyst Stu Miniman. The 65-year-old chief executive is nearing his 20th anniversary at the vendor’s helm, which makes him one of the longest serving tech bosses around, in leagues with the likes of Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Jen-Hsun Huang of Nvidia.  He is also among the most respected, Miniman notes, with many crediting him for playing a key role in bringing the traditional enterprise into the Internet era.

Raynovich cites multiple sources at Cisco and in Wall Street as saying that Chambers could announce his retirement as early as September, at the close of the firm’s fiscal year, while Light Reading’s Mitch Wagner references insider rumors that an official confirmation could come as soon as July.

The company has declined to comment on the reports but a spokesperson told media that, as a matter of policy, it would announce a change of leadership at least six months prior to a switch taking place so to give the market time to adjust. Either way, if the chatter turns out to be true, Chambers’ eventual departure would fall into the timeframe he specified in a September 2012 interview with Bloomberg.

The executive said that he may retire within two to four years and revealed Cisco has as many as 10 candidates on hand to replace him. Among them is chief operating officer Gary Moore, worldwide operations lead  Robert Lloyd, Americas head Chuck Robbins and Edzard Overbeek, the senior vice president of global services.

From a strategic standpoint, this is as good a time as ever for Chambers to bow out. Although he takes much of the credit for establishing Cisco as an industry leader and successfully pulled it out of a cloud-induced downward spiral two years ago, the company has been slow to react to the rise of software-defined networking under his leadership.

Despite its grandiose plans around “Application-Centric Infrastructure” and $1 billion platform-as-a-service push, Cisco continues to be dependant on proprietary hardware for the bulk of its revenues. As the transition to commodity network architectures edges closer to the tipping point for widespread adoption, fresh leadership may just be what it needs to get back on the saddle.

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