Channel Beat: Meet Chambers' Successor At Cisco

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Without a doubt, the biggest story of this week isCisco’s new CEO, Chuck Robbins. Cisco named the successor to John Chambers early Monday morning.

Chambers has since spoken highly of Robbins, particularly around the need to drive sales in the IoT era. Robbins, who has extensive experience with Cisco partners, will take over the CEO role July 26. Chambers will stay on at Cisco as executive chairman and as chairman of the board.

Although Robbins has not officially stepped into the role, he has already increased compensation for direct sales reps selling partner-provided services since being named Chambers’ successor.

[Related:New Cisco CEO: Chuck Robbins Replaces John Chambers]

Reports continue to surface about thepossible acquisition of Salesforce.com, and Microsoft might be throwing its hat into the ring.

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft was not the mystery company previously courting Salesforce, but now the company is considering a bid.

Salesforce had a market capitalization of nearly $48.6 billion at the time of this report.

Fortinet introduced a new and improved partner programthis week, adding a new authorized partner level and launching a network security certification.

Fortinet said the new program translates to more focused and dedicated resources for partners. The company, which has more than 10,000 partners, also unveiled a training program available to all partners.

PUBLISHED MAY 8, 2015