Cisco ends long search for CEO with internal appointment

Chuck Robbins

Cisco is reshuffling its deck after the succession committee finally chose a successor to outgoing CEO John Chambers after his 20 years as head of the company.

It took Cisco an arduous 16 months to find new CEO Chuck Robbins who moves from his position as senior VP of worldwide field operations and is being primed to take over the head honcho's role on July 26, 2015.

"Chuck will both accelerate what makes Cisco an undeniably great company and also drive the transformation to carry the company to a whole new level. Chuck has the full confidence and trust of the Cisco Board as we enter this next chapter," explained Cisco board members Roderick C. McGeary and Francine Katsoudas in a blog post.

$1b on the IoT

Robbins has been at Cisco since 1997 and the global sales and partner team that he most recently headed up contributes a phenomenal $47 billion (around £31 billion, or AU$59.7 billion) worth of business to the company as a whole and is he extremely familiar with Cisco's culture.

Chambers has been active even in the final days of his headship and is a particular evangelist of the internet of things into which Cisco plunged some $1 billion (around £661 million, or AU$1.27 billion) back in March 2014, and this plan will only accelerate under Robbins.