Business Insider
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins.
- Cisco Executive Vice President David Goeckeler is leaving the tech giant to take on a new role as CEO of data storage company Western Digital.
- The company also unveiled changes to its engineering team aimed at beefing up its cloud strategy.
- Another key executive, Amy Chang of the tech giant's collaboration team, is going on leave to focus on family.
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A key Cisco executive is leaving the company, as the tech giant has sought to beef up its cloud strategy with more changes to its engineering team.
Cisco said Executive Vice President David Goeckeler is stepping down to take on a new role as CEO of data storage company Western Digital.
"We will miss you but we will all be your biggest fans!" Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said in a tweet.
The tech giant also said Amy Change, another executive vice president in charge of Cisco's collaboration products, is going on leave for family reasons.
Goeckler is departing just four months after sending a memo on a major reorganization aimed at stressing Cisco's focus on the cloud and consolidating its efforts in the networking and data center markets.
"While I know these updates may seem like a significant change, it's important to understand, this alignment will create new opportunities for driving synergies across domains and will strongly position the company against our competitors," Goeckeler said in the memo.
Cisco unveiled additional changes, focused on its engineering team. The company's enterprise networking and cloud will now be led by senior vice president Todd Nightingale, who joined the tech giant when it acquired Meraki, the cloud IT management company.
Cisco's mass-scale infrastructure division is now led by senior vice president Jonathan Davidson, who joined Cisco three years ago after a long stint at rival Juniper Networks. The company said it has yet to name the head of its security and applications business.
The company's emerging technologies and incubation group will be led by senior vice president Liz Centoni, a 20-year Cisco veteran, and its core hardware platforms group will be led by senior vice president Eyal Dagan, who joined Cisco in 2016 when it acquired Leaba Semiconductor.
"We are always looking to build the strongest portfolio and platforms for the future," a Cisco spokesperson told Business Insider. "Cisco's new engineering team structure aligns with our transformation strategy."
That transformation is essentially about major changes in Cisco's business model. Cisco emerged as a tech powerhouse by dominating the market for networking equipment used for private data centers. Like other major traditional enterprise tech companies, Cisco has had to adapt to the cloud, which let businesses set up networks on web-based platforms, which made it possible to scale down or abandon private data centers.
That has hurt Cisco's business, but the company is eyeing new trends led by hybrid cloud in which businesses set up networks in the cloud while keeping huge chunks of their data and applications on in-house data centers. The tech giant has also explored other opportunities, such as selling components, including semiconductors, directly to public cloud companies.
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