John Chambers, President & CEO, Cisco Systems

By Jennifer Hagendorf Follett, ChannelWeb

9:00 AM EST Mon. Nov. 13, 2006
From the November 13, 2006 issue of CRN

2006 TOP 25: 1-5 | 6-10 | 11-15 | 16-20 | 21-25

Cisco Systems President and CEO John Chambers is on the hunt. Cisco already has a commanding presence in most markets it plays in and sales were up 15 percent to $28.6 billion in fiscal 2006. But to maintain that kind of performance, as he hopes to, Chambers, 57, will need to keep tackling new growth areas.

Now Cisco's growth opportunity seems to lie beyond its traditional stronghold in routers and switches as the San Jose, Calif., company moves upstream to the broader communications market. Chambers' mantra these days is that the network is really the platform for delivering communications, and it's a message he's relying on channel partners to deliver.

To that end, Chambers has christened partner enablement one of Cisco's top three priorities, an initiative supported by a pledge to double investments in channel education. He also has spent much of this year evangelizing and investing in video as Cisco's next big IP communications play.

Solution providers say that where Chambers leads, they will follow, finding growing sales and profits along the way. "He's clearly created an incredible vision," says John Jensen, CEO of Nexus IS, Valencia, Calif. "We've built our business following the messages that have come from John and his team over the past two and a half years."

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