Cisco names Chuck Robbins as CEO, John Chambers stays as chairman

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Jacob Kepler

John Chambers is passing the CEO job at Cisco Systems on to Chuck Robbins, the company's chief of worldwide operations.

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Cromwell Schubarth

Senior Technology Reporter- Silicon Valley Business Journal

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Cisco Systems named Chuck Robbins as John Chambers' successor as CEO, effective at the end of July.

Robbins, the San Jose company's senior vice president of world-wide operations, joined Cisco in 1997, two years after Chambers became CEO. Cisco has a large campus in Richardson.

Chambers, 65, will remain as executive chairman. In his time the company grew into the world's dominant networking equipment company, going from $1.2 billion in annual revenue 20 years ago to about $48 billion today.

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“This is the perfect time for Chuck Robbins to become Cisco’s next chief executive officer,” Chambers said in a press release.

The move comes at a time when Cisco is facing what some consider to be its toughest challenge, staying on top as the network and infrastructure market it has dominated shifts from a hardware focus to a software focus.

Robbins, 49, was a key player in two of Cisco's biggest acquisitions in recent years, done to help it ward off the challenge of cloud-based rivals. He was executive sponsor of the $1.2 billion purchase of San Francisco-based Meraki in 2012 and the $2.7 billion purchase of data security company Sourcefire in 2013.

But in addition to the challenge for software upstarts, Cisco is facing reduced purchasing by telecommunications carriers and lower demand in China.

The company is also moving to position itself as the continued networking leader as data demands are expected to mushroom from connected automobiles, household and commercial equipment that make up the "Internet of Things."

Cromwell Schubarth is the Senior Technology Reporter at the Silicon Valley Business Journal.