Cisco Systems has hired former SAP North America Channel Chief Microsoft veteran Marc Monday as global head of small business sales, according to Monday's LinkedIn profile.
The move comes as Cisco strives to extend many of its products and recurring revenue cloud services into the small business market -- including home-grown products and acquired platforms such as Duo, Meraki and Umbrella (formerly OpenDNS),
Former Cisco CEO John Chambers largely abandoned small business customers and partners a decade ago, preferring to focus on large enterprises and service providers. But current CEO Chuck Robbins has rekindled the SMB sales and channel efforts over the past two years or so, including partnerships with ConnectWise in the MSP channel.
Hiring Marc Monday reinforces that Cisco SMB channel commitment. In addition to his channel experience at SAP, Monday had major success while driving partner efforts for SAP Concur, VMware and Microsoft.
SAP, Cisco: Evolution Mode
Both SAP and Cisco Systems have been in evolution mode.
Cisco has been pushing hard toward recurring revenues and MSP-friendly channel offerings. The company's latest quarterly revenues and earnings largely met or exceeded Wall Street's expectations, but shares fell last week amid concerns about the US-China trade war and a potentially slowing economy.
Meanwhile, SAP CEO Bill McDermott has been shaking up the software company, but his efforts have to meet key long-term profit and business performance goals set by activist investor Elliott Management. McDermott revealed an SAP management and business shakeup in January 2019, though he insisted the software company remains in growth mode amid its shift to cloud-fueled recurring revenues.
We've reached out to Cisco for more details about Monday's role at the company -- especially as the countdown to Cisco Partner Summit 2019 continues. Also, we've reached out to SAP to see who will manage Monday's former responsibilities.
