Blatant Speculation: McHugh for Mitel CEOBlatant Speculation: McHugh for Mitel CEO

The man who built HP ProCurve into a billion-dollar business and a strong Cisco alternative currently serves on Mitel's board of directors

This is completely my first, off-the-wall take on who should succeed Don Smith as Mitel's CEO: John McHugh, the man who built HP ProCurve into the biggest networking contender to Cisco since the early days of switching.

McHugh currently is chief marketing officer at Brocade, but more significantly, he serves on Mitel's board of directors. He also had a tenure as head of Nortel's data operation, before the company was acquired by Avaya.

ProCurve was a $1 billion business line by the time McHugh left in 2008, meaning it was bigger than Mitel is now; based on the most recent financials, Mitel is on a run rate of around three-quarters of a billion.

McHugh doesn't have a particularly strong enterprise voice heritage, but then neither do several other vendor CEOs in the space: Kevin Kennedy came to Avaya via JDS Uniphase and the service provider division of Cisco (though he's also a Bell Labs vet); and Hamid Akhavan, the new CEO of Siemens Enterprise, came out of the cellular world, as COO of Deutsche Telekom. These days, a background in the old PBX world is as likely a handicap as it is an asset.

As I said, pure speculation on my part, but considering his success with ProCurve, it seems like he should have a shot at a top job somewhere.