Cisco lost a key warrior in its battle to become a monster software player this week as Rowan Trollope, senior vice president and head of the $5 billion Application Group, said he would be leaving the company effective May 3 to become CEO of cloud startup Five9.
“During Trollope’s tenure, his team reinvented Cisco’s Collaboration business, pivoting to a SaaS model and making design, simplicity and exponential improvement the guiding principles of product development,” Five9 wrote in describing its new CEO’s pedigree.
“As a result, the business returned to growth – with recurring revenue growing in the double digits, margins expanding significantly, market share increasing, and leading Cisco’s shift to recurring revenue.”