John Bruggeman, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Cadence, is leaving the company after two years. This comes as something of a surprise to many industry watchers, given Bruggeman’s prominent role in reshaping the EDA vendor following its revenue drop and ill-advised play for Mentor Graphics in 2008.

In laying out his EDA360 vision, Bruggeman asserted software must help profitability as much as productivity, and that future designs will be app-driven, in which users would start with the applications and then overlay the optimized hardware/software.

In doing so, Bruggeman echoed hardware design industry guru Lee Ritchey, who famously said at a Printed Circuit Design-sponsored tech session that users buy the hardware to run the software.

Bruggeman’s departure has raised the question about Cadence’s executive succession plan, and whether he lost a battle to run the company in the future. Again, some analysts feel CEO Lip-Bu Tan plans to step down sooner rather than later, and that Bruggeman’s resignation paves the way for senior vice president of worldwide field operations Charlie Huang to ultimately ascend the throne.

Stay tuned.