Cisco Channel Marketing VP To Exit

Amanda Jobbins, the hard-charging vice president of global partner marketing at Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO), is leaving the company and returning to her native United Kingdom, CRN has learned.

Reached by CRN, a Cisco spokesperson confirmed Jobbins' departure and said that it was for family reasons. Jobbins' internal team at Cisco was notified of her exit earlier on Friday, according to sources.

Jobbins' manager, Karen Walker, Cisco global vice president of segment, services and field marketing, will be assuming the partner marketing responsibilities until Jobbins' replacement is named, according to the Cisco spokesperson, and she and Jobbins will be working closely through September on the transition.

"As VP of Global Partner Marketing over the past year, Amanda has done a tremendous job building out the function within Global Marketing and Corporate Communication," read a statement from Cisco emailed to CRN. "We thank Amanda for her many contributions during her tenure at Cisco."

Jobbins was in the role for just over a year, but had quickly established herself with partners as a no-nonsense, quick-witted member of Cisco's channel management team. She had committed to further expanding Cisco's partner marketing programs, which are some of the most extensive and well thought-of programs in the industry, to include more funding and a wider range of resources, particularly around social media.

In February, during Cisco's annual Partner Velocity event, Jobbins unveiled a series of new offers for partners -- including expanded joint marketing funds, assistance with social media and the ability to work with a marketing consultant on an integrated campaign -- and promised solution providers other tools such as virtual marketing consultants.

Jobbins was named to the job during the beginnings of Cisco's global restructuring last year. She succeeded another popular Cisco vice president of worldwide partner marketing, Luanne Tierney, who had jumped to Cisco rival Juniper in January 2011.

 

Jobbins spent about four years at Cisco, and before her current role, she was vice president of marketing for Cisco in Europe. She worked in European marketing roles at Symantec and McAfee, among other places, before joining Cisco in 2008.

Cisco partners are seeing a channel management team much changed in the last two years. In addition to the marketing exits, Cisco also recently confirmed the retirement of Keith Goodwin, senior vice president, Worldwide Partner Organization (WWPO), who's passing the torch to Bruce Klein, most recently Cisco's senior vice president, U.S. public sector theater.

In addition, Wendy Bahr has returned from her role running Cisco's top global partnerships to be Cisco's senior vice president, Americas Partner Organization, following the move by Jim Sherriff, who'd had the role since 2010, to a new role running the sales function for Cisco's companywide Accelerated Cisco Transformation (ACT) project.

Polycom Will Sue To Enforce Sale Of Wireless Unit

Polycom's plan to divest its wireless phone systems business to an affiliate of Sun Capital Partners is apparently on the rocks.

The phone and video systems company said it plans to file a lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court and will "zealously pursue all appropriate recourse and will seek expedited treatment of this matter with the goal of reaching resolution in 2012."

Polycom made the statement in a Form 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission dated August 21. It provides no further details about what is affecting the deal, which Polycom announced in mid-May and was supposed to close in the third quarter.

Under the terms provided at that time, Sun Capital agreed to pay about $110 million in cash for the Polycom wireless handset unit, which includes the Wi-Fi and DECT handsets Polycom sold under the SpectraLink and KIRK brands, among others.

The business, according to Polycom, yielded about $94 million in revenue for calendar 2011 -- a fraction of Polycom's 2011 revenue of $1.5 billion. The $110 million figure is also about half of the $220 million paid by Polycom to acquire SpectraLink five years ago.

Polycom did not respond to a request for comment by CRN. Sun Capital told several outlets, including Bloomberg Businessweek, that it would not comment on pending litigation but has "acted, and continue to act, in good faith in this matter."

Polycom has sought to reposition its branding and corporate strategy around software, aggressively developing businesses such as video content management and mobile UC that support its bread-and-butter IP communications systems. It has also stepped up partnerships with the likes of Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT), HP (NYSE:HPQ) and Juniper to combat both Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO), the dominant vendor in the enterprise video space, and a legion of smaller videoconferencing companies trying to wrest customers away with cheaper video alternatives.

Cisco SVP, Former Channel Chief Mountford Departs

Paul Mountford, the former Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO) global channel chief and most recently senior vice president, global enterprise, has left Cisco after more than a decade and a half, CRN has learned.

Mountford departed Cisco and returned to the United Kingdom to spend more time with his family, according to a Cisco spokesperson reached by CRN Monday.

"Paul has been with Cisco for more than 16 years and has held a variety of roles including leading Cisco's emerging market strategy and overseeing our worldwide channels organization," said the spokesperson in a statement provided to CRN. "We sincerely thank Paul for his contributions and wish him the best in his future endeavors."

Cisco said that Nick Adamo, senior vice president, service provider, will be absorbing Mountford's duties and filling the position for both Cisco's service provider and enterprise segments.

Mountford moved into his most recent role in June 2011 as part of Cisco's global restructuring and the folding of the emerging markets theater, which Mountford had run, into then-newly created Cisco geographies. But, he's still best known to solution providers for the three years, from 2002 to 2005, he spent running Cisco's global channels. Keith Goodwin, who is retiring from Cisco's top channel job this month, succeeded Mountford in 2005.

 

Most recently, Mountford had a group of about 875 people and managed the various Cisco technology architecture sales leaders for Borderless Networks, Collaboration and Data Center, as well as engineering and design teams. He was also spearheading Smart Solutions, an emerging effort by Cisco to identify, enable and reward partners who design and sell multivendor solutions focused on Cisco architecture.

Mountford is the latest in an increasingly long list of VP- and higher-level departures or reassignments among Cisco executives. In other recent moves close to the channel, Amanda Jobbins, vice president of global partner marketing, resigned her position. Jobbins, like Mountford, cited family matters and sought a return to the U.K.

Cisco's loss is Palo Alto Networks' gain

NEW YORK, USA: When Cisco Systems Inc decided years ago to drop a network-security project known internally as "Apollo," little did it know it had paved the way for a startup to blossom into a formidable competitor.

That company, Palo Alto Networks, is one of the leaders today in the multibillion-dollar market for corporate Internet firewalls. Founded in 2005, Palo Alto Networks debuts next week in an initial public offering that could value the firm at more than $2 billion.

Cisco and other deep-pocketed vendors may have misjudged how Internet use would balloon with the takeoff of social media, and with it, the need for sophisticated tools to safeguard private data and monitor suspicious activity, analysts say.

Enter self-taught programmer and Palo Alto Networks founder Nir Zuk, whose penchant for pursuing new technologies culminates in 2012's most anticipated market debut since Facebook Inc's IPO in May.

"We anticipate this will be one of the hottest tech IPOs of the year," said ISI group analyst Brian Marshall.

The company coined the term "next generation firewall" (NGFW) to describe its products, which among other things, lets companies tightly control access to Internet applications for specific users. An employee could connect with Facebook, for example, but not play games.

Essentially, NGFW converges multiple security functions such as firewall, intrusion prevention systems and secure Web gateways on a single platform, Lazard Capital Markets said in a note earlier this week.

"Overall, customers get for the first time, a view of the applications and data entering and leaving their networks, such as attachments and zip files," Lazard said.

Palo Alto Networks grew in direct proportion to social networking sites like Facebook, web-based tools like Google Inc's Gmail and the use of Skype for communications.

Its technology made it easier to monitor and secure traffic from social networking platforms than with traditional firewalls offered by Cisco, Check Point Software Technologies and Juniper Networks.

"Juniper is rarely considered by customers looking for an NGFW," research outfit Gartner, which refers to Palo Alto as a "disruptive influence," said in a report.

DROPPED BALL

Palo Alto Networks' success story illustrates how Cisco and Juniper dropped the ball, allowing an upstart to succeed on their turf.

Cisco opted to scrap "Apollo" - which a former employee who worked on the project said would have been a "Palo Alto killer" - in favor of other traditional security features. Network security is now considered among its chief weaknesses, Gartner said.

Around that time, Juniper executives were turning deaf ears to the entreaties of then-chief security technologist Nir Zuk.

Zuk, who taught himself to write computer programs when he was 16, founded Palo Alto Networks after being frustrated by what he called a lack of innovation at Juniper Networks.