Cisco ELT Reshuffle Comes As Company Prepares For Splunk, ‘Key Priority’ Tech Focus

On the heels of the departure of Cisco’s EVP and COO Maria Martinez last month, the tech giant is shifting responsibilities of some of its executive leadership team members to better position the company for growth, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said on Tuesday.

Cisco Systems is reshuffling some responsibilities across its executive leadership team on the heels of the company’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, Maria Martinez, leaving the company last month.

Three current Cisco executives have been promoted, while one will leave the company, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said in a blog post published on Tuesday.

Liz Centoni, executive vice president and general manager of applications and chief strategy officer, will now serve as the company’s new executive vice president and chief customer experience officer. Thimaya Subaiya, the company’s chief transformation officer, is becoming executive vice president of operations. Mark Patterson, chief of staff to Robbins, is becoming executive vice president and chief strategy officer. The changes are effective immediately, according to the company.

At the same time, Alistair Wildman, Cisco’s current senior vice president of global customer experiences and services who has been with the tech giant for more than five years, will work with Centoni in an advisory capacity before leaving the company, San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco said. It’s not clear from the blog post when Wildman will depart.

“Our world is becoming increasingly complex and unpredictable … With the rapid adoption of AI and other new technologies, we have the opportunity to solve critical customer and global issues that may have once seemed unsolvable. We are laser focused on these efforts, and we believe the changes we are sharing today will help us reach these faster and result in differentiated innovation, simplified experiences for our customers, partners, and teams, and long-term growth for Cisco,” Robbins said in his post.

A longtime Cisco veteran of more than two decades, Centoni began as senior director of engineering for the tech company in 2000. She’s held a number of vice president-level engineering and strategy roles, including being tapped to lead Cisco’s Future Technologies and Incubation group that was formed in 2020. Centoni has done a fair amount of moving around within Cisco. She served as senior vice president and general manager of IoT for Cisco for nearly two years before she was named leader of the Cloud Strategy and Compute business unit that was formed in 2019. In her latest promotion, Centoni will apply new and emerging technologies, including AI, to better serve customers and partners, Robbins said. The Cisco Observability portfolio, which includes Full Stack Observability (FSO) and Cisco AppDynamics, will continue under her leadership.

Subaiya joined Cisco six years ago when he began leading the company’s customer experience strategy, which was under the direction of Martinez. In his most recent role as chief transformation officer, Subaiya pushed Cisco to go after more software and subscriptions by making the company’s processes easier and simplify tools for productivity so that customers and partners could more easily do business with Cisco. In his new charter, Subaiya will be critical in helping the company on its transformation path while continuing to lead efforts to simplify operations, Robbins said.

Patterson, who also has more than 23 years of experience at Cisco, has been a business partner to Robbins for more than 17 years. In his most recent role, he led corporate planning and high-growth cross-company initiatives. Patterson in his new role has been tasked with leading corporate strategy, corporate development, and the company’s emerging technology and incubation efforts as the company grows through acquisitions, strategic partnerships, investments, co-development, and innovation. This will help Cisco “move quickly to capture opportunities that better both our portfolio and our business,” Robbins said.

Cisco during its most recent fiscal quarter ran into lowered product revenues. At the same time, the tech giant confirmed that it would be cutting jobs globally to adjust expenses and investments to reflect the current macro environment, Robbins told investors during the company’s fiscal Q2 2024 earnings call in February.

Cisco’s job cuts this year will impact about 5 percent of its workforce as the company looks to realign its organization to focus on “key priority” areas, including AI and security with its pending acquisition of Splunk likely to close in the first half of the year.

“I have no doubt that these three leaders will bring fresh perspectives and innovative thinking to their new roles to accelerate what’s going well and identify and adjust where changes are needed. Change is certainly not new to Cisco as we have fundamentally revamped our business model, let go of outdated legacies, and are always looking at how we evolve to best serve the needs of our customers,” Robbins said.