Cisco’s Longtime Marketing Guru Jumps To VMware

“[Prashanth Shenoy] is a proven leader that we feel can take our cloud marketing to another level,” said Mark Lohmeyer, senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s cloud infrastructure business group.

Prashanth Shenoy

After more than 22 years of helping lead Cisco’s marketing around networking, cloud and data center solutions and strategy, Prashanth Shenoy has left the networking giant to join VMware.

Shenoy leaves San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco as the global head of marketing for the company’s massive $25 billion portfolio of cloud infrastructure and software. Cisco’s marketing guru is often featured on stage during Cisco’s largest conferences, partner summits and virtual events.

“Prashanth is a perfect fit for helping us execute on our multi-cloud vision,” said Mark Lohmeyer, senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s cloud infrastructure business group in an email to CRN.

“His strong technical background, deep understanding of customer challenges, and work on some of the most foundational technologies in networking will bring fresh perspective to our go to market strategy for VMware Cloud,” Lohmeyer said. “He’s a proven leader that we feel can take our cloud marketing to another level.”

[Related: Top Cloud Market Share Leaders: AWS, Microsoft, Google Lead Q2 2022]

Shenoy is responsible for driving product and technical marketing for the VMware’s multi-billion business spanning on-premise private and local clouds, hyperscaler-based public clouds, and managed service-provider clouds.

“I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Vice President, Cloud Platform, Infrastructure and Solutions Marketing at VMware!” said Shenoy in a LinkedIn post.

Shenoy’s post has already received over 120 comments with congratulations coming from current and former Cisco executives as well as VMware marketing leaders.

The hiring of Shenoy comes as VMware revamps its Partner Connect partner program, while Broadcom is also set to acquire VMware for $61 billion.

Cisco is also set to lose leader Todd Nightingale, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Enterprise Networking and Cloud Business. Nightingale is set to become the CEO of Fastly Inc. on Sept. 1.

Prashanth Shenoy Cisco Career

As vice president of cloud and networking marketing for Cisco over the past two years, Shenoy led the marketing launch of Cisco’s Hybrid Cloud Automation full-stack solution, dubbed Future Cloud, for its 20,000 partners and 100,000 customers.

Shenoy is Cisco’s global head of marketing for its massive cloud infrastructure and software portfolio, which includes enterprise networking, compute, storage, hyperconverged infrastructure, cloud operations and as-a-service offerings.

He also led the launch for Cisco Plus, the company’s foray into delivering its core portfolio as-a-service with Cisco Plus Hybrid Cloud and Cisco SASE offers.

Shenoy has also played a critical role in getting Cisco’s messaging out when the company recently formed strategic partnerships with the likes of Google Cloud and Hashicorp.

He began his career at Cisco in 2000 as a senior software engineer, moving to his first marketing management role in 2005.

Over the years, Shenoy has held titles such as senior director of product and solutions marketing for enterprise networking and mobility, as well as vice president of marketing for Cisco’s enterprise, data center and cloud networking developer platform, where he led a global team of 80 marketing leaders across 25 counties.

Broadcom Set To Acquire VMware

Shenoy’s move to VMware as its new vice president of cloud platform, infrastructure and solutions marketing, comes as Broadcom is set to acquire VMware for a whopping $61 billion.

Both Broadcom and VMware’s board—as well as VMware’s largest shareholder and board chair, Michael Dell—had signed off on the proposed merger.

Once the acquisition is closed, VMware will become part of Broadcom’s Software Group, which will be rebranded as VMware. The business unit will be led by Broadcom CEO Hock Tan.

Broadcom has committed to closing the deal within fiscal year 2023, which ends October 2023.