‘I think next year, we should be a meaningfully different company for the better, and in two years, we should almost be an unrecognizable company for the better, and that would be the yardstick for success,’ said Cisco’s Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel.

Cisco Systems is undergoing a transformation, and that’s within its leadership ranks, too.

With the $28 billion Splunk acquisition now closed, the tech behemoth added former Splunk CEO Gary Steele to its ranks as its president of go-to-market. In August, Jeetu Patel, formerly Cisco’s executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration, was promoted to chief product officer. The refreshed executive leadership team is indicative of a transforming Cisco, partners tell CRN.

The sentiment was confirmed by the company’s top executives.

“I think next year, we should be a meaningfully different company for the better, and in two years, we should almost be an unrecognizable company for the better, and that would be the yardstick for success,” Patel told members of the media and analysts at Cisco Partner Summit 2024 in October.

[Related: Cisco Channel Chief Exclusive: New Partner Program The ‘First Material Shift’ In Evaluating Partners On Value, Not Transactions]

Simplification, as indicated by what Cisco is doing with its newly introduced partner program, the integrations between the once very disparate business units and the adjusted leadership team shows that Cisco wants to bring everything into “one house,” said Salim Gheewalla, vice president of marketing and alliances for Ottawa-based MSP giant Calian IT & Cyber Solutions.

“They’ve got all these [products] and they act like isolated pieces. I think with [Patel] taking over, it’s a good move. And then you have [Steele] as president of go-to-market; they have all these pieces in place, now let’s bring them all together,” Gheewalla said.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said in an interview with CRN that Steele joining Cisco as president of go to market and Patel being promoted to chief product officer shines on a light on the company’s sense of urgency and desire to win.

“We understand that our customers are going to need to move fast, and the markets are moving fast, and so we really have no other choice. I felt like [Steele’s], seniority, his experience, his pragmatism, and when you think about getting back to the basics of really selling core infrastructure, he has made that a number one priority. His real objective is: “How do we help our partners and our Cisco sales teams? Let’s take the noise out of the system so they can be in front of customers more effectively with the right technical resources to help our customers move as fast as possible in this environment,” he said.

In addition to security and collaboration, Patel has also taken command of Cisco’s massive networking business, which was valued at about $29 billion in FY 2024, in his new capacity as the company’s first Chief Product Officer. Under his leadership, Cisco will build and promote cross-portfolio integrations between its product segments, such as networking and security, in the way that “only Cisco can do,” Robbins said.

“[Patel] has proven himself over and over again with collaboration and security. And I think … it’s pretty clear that in 90 days, he’s getting a real grasp on the networking side as well. I think you can see a meaningful shift in how we talked about the technology today, and moving at the pace that our customers really need us to move in order to help them achieve what they need to achieve,” he said of Patel’s leadership.

Security is undoubtedly one of Cisco’s biggest areas of focus, and raising Patel to chief product officer to thread security into the rest of Cisco’s products and services is an “encouraging” move, said Brandon Harris, vice president, hybrid data center, for Logicalis US, the Troy, Michigan-based arm of the global solution provider and Cisco partner.

“[Patel] is really pulling this all together,” Harris said. “For customers wondering: ‘Do I go platform or best of breed?’ Cisco’s messaging is around the full platform.”

Moving Fast With AI

Cisco needs to move fast against the AI opportunity and the company acknowledges that it has to be at a faster clip than it did for cloud.

“I’ve been very blunt about cloud over the years, and I think that not only did we not move fast, we actually weren’t sure of our role at the time and I think in this case, it’s just so different. [Patel] talked about the differentiators in the stack that we have, all the way from the silicon — which obviously is at the heart of the systems that we’re selling to hyperscalers and will be at the heart of the systems we sell to the enterprise as well — all the way up through the systems and the security needed and the software needed. I think we are well prepared and we understand what our customers need,” Cisco’s Robbins said.

This time around, Cisco understands its role in AI, which involves bringing together networking, security, and observability, Robbins said.

“We’re in a good place relative to delivering on those technologies. And I think we have a very clear strategy,” he said.