Watch for news from a hot networking company in Petaluma, Calif., called Calix. What you need to know about Calix is that it makes equipment for the Internet TV (known as IPTV — Stephanie Mehta knows all about this stuff) business and is headed by Carl Russo, who made a fortune by selling Cerent to Cisco (CSCO) back in the day. Russo’s a shrewd guy who’s crazy enough to drive race cars and sane enough to pay someone else to fly his private jet.
He was all set to host an analyst day next week at the swanky Four Seasons hotel in San Francisco, a sort of bold move for a private company. I just got an email from Calix’s reps saying the analyst day has been “POSTPONED for now.” That’s almost always a sign of one of two things: that the company is getting ready to go public or has agreed to be sold.
It’s worth remembering that Cerent filed to go public and then sold to Cisco. It’ll be interesting to see if history repeats itself here. (Corey Hajim speculated about a Calix IPO last year in Fortune.)
