Cisco Service Provider Video Chief Exits
Enrique Rodriguez, who joined Cisco from Microsoft in 2010, is leaving the company to "pursue other opportunities," following a change in the reporting structure for key Cisco video units. Rodriguez, who was senior vice president and general manager of the SPVTG, ran the Cisco business responsible for television and video service sales to service providers.
According to his official Cisco bio, Rodriguez managed over $2 billion in revenue and had responsibility for products like Cisco's Content Delivery System, video servers and switched digital video products. He also oversaw Videoscape, the home entertainment platform Cisco unveiled at CES in January, and which it looked to bolster with the February acquisition of Inlet Technologies.
Rodriguez joined Microsoft in 2003, and in his last role there was corporate vice president in charge of Microsoft's TV, video and music businesses, including everything from Windows Media Center to Microsoft's Zune media player. Before Microsoft, Rodriguez held a number of executive positions at Thomson/RCA, where he spent about 20 years.
Rodriguez's departure was first reported by Light Reading. Cisco further confirmed that its service provider and enterprise video businesses have been combined under one executive, Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco's Emerging Business Group.
"We believe this move will spur innovation and synergies across Cisco's end-to-end video portfolio, which spans service provider, enterprise and consumer networks, and enable Cisco and our customers to introduce new video services, applications and experiences with speed and agility," said a Cisco spokesman in a statement to CRN.
De Beer also took control of Cisco's Consumer Business Group following Cisco's decision to discontinue the Flip video camera and make changes to several of its consumer lines. De Beer's Emerging Business Group was created during Cisco's May restructuring of its global sales and engineering organizations.
Cisco is in the midst of an ongoing corporate restructuring, through which it will look to cut $1 billion in expenses by the end of its fiscal 2012 and restore what Chairman and CEO John Chambers previously described as "lost credibility" in the market.
Cisco, which reports fiscal fourth quarter and full-year earnings on Aug. 10, has already said it will lay off 6,500 employees, and also transfer 5,000 employees to Foxconn Technology Group following the sale of a Cisco set-top box manufacturing plant located in Juarez, Mexico.
Specific to the channel, Cisco partners have sought further details on how Cisco will simplify operations, and the company has already made several adjustments within its Worldwide Partner Organization as it promotes a strategy called "partner-led."