Cisco Names New Americas Boss

According to an internal memo authored by Robbins and viewed by CRN, Adamo will take over as senior vice president, worldwide field operations, the Americas. The job has been open since Robbins was named senior vice president of global sales back in October.

"Nick Adamo is the obvious choice for this role based on his background in enterprise and service provider and his deep working knowledge of sales, development, architectures and the business entities," Robbins wrote in the memo, which was distributed to Cisco employees Wednesday. "With 28 years of sales leadership experience in IT and communications, Nick's hands-on leadership style, ability to effectively balance strategy and execution, success as building long-standing customer relationships, and deep commitment to his people make him the ideal leader to take the Americas sales organization to the next level."

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Reached by CRN, a Cisco spokesperson confirmed Adamo's move.

Adamo was most recently senior vice president, global segments and architectures, where among other roles he drove Cisco's global product strategy for service providers and also co-chaired Cisco's service provider business council. Following Paul Mountford's departure as senior vice president, global enterprise, in August, Adamo added those duties, too.

Earlier in his Cisco career, he was senior vice president of Cisco's service provider business in the U.S., vice president of Cisco's U.S. incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) market and vice president of the Northeast Area, covering enterprise sales in New York, New England and New Jersey.

Adamo joined Cisco in 1995, and he previously spent 11 years in sales roles at IBM.

Adamo reports to Robbins. In addition, the various global segments and architectures (GSA) leaders, which include Carl Wiese, John McCool, Frank Palumbo, Jeff Spagnola, Kit Beall, Steve Silva, Mike Rau and Neal Oristano, will all report to Robbins, with a new GSA leader to be named at a later date.

Cisco has made a number of executive changes in its new fiscal year, including the promotions of both Rob Lloyd, president, sales and development, and Gary Moore, president and COO, to a president-level executive tier just below Chairman and CEO John Chambers. Robbins, as global sales leader, reports to Lloyd.

Cisco's Worldwide Partner Organization has also seen significant changes, including the promotion of Bruce Klein last year to the role of senior vice president, WWPO, and the return of Wendy Bahr as senior vice president, Americas partner organization. Cisco still hasn't named a new partner marketing vice president to replace Amanda Jobbins, who left last summer.

PUBLISHED JAN. 16, 2013