John Chambers, the CEO of American multinational networking equipment corporation
Cisco Systems Inc. is to step down after two decades in the position. Mr. Chambers will hand the corporation's leadership over to Chuck Robbins. The company, which has headquarters in San Jose, California, is recognized globally and synonymous with the rise of the IT era. Mr. Chambers will leave the position on July 26 of this year and step up to the position of Executive Chairman of the Cisco Board. The news drove Cisco shares up 0.4%.
Despite struggling to compete in the modern cloud-based IT environment, Cisco, which employs a staff of around 70,000, was one of the companies that benefited greatly for the dot.com boom of the late nineties. Mr. Chambers' replacement is a bone fide industry veteran. 49-year-old Chuck Robbins began his career as an application developer before moving into sales. As he says on his Linkedin profile, he has been at Cisco for around 17 years and led teams that have operated in "every Cisco customer segment, on every technology in our portfolio, and in all our geographies around the world". A number of analysts have suggested bringing in Mr. Robbins' as CEO means the company may re-position its business operations away from networking.
“This is the perfect time for Chuck Robbins to become Cisco's next Chief Executive Officer," explained John Chambers in a press release posted on Cisco's website. "We've selected a very strong leader at a time when Cisco is in a very strong position. Today’s pace of change is exponential. Every company, city and country is becoming digital, navigating disruptive markets, and Cisco’s role in the digital transformation has never been more important. Our next CEO needs to thrive in a highly dynamic environment, to be capable of accelerating what is working very well for Cisco, and disrupting what needs to change. Chuck is unique in his ability to translate vision and strategy into world-class execution, bringing together teams and ecosystems to drive results."
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