New Cisco Security And Apps Group To Gain A Leader: Box's Jeetu Patel

One day before its scheduled Cisco Live 2020 virtual event, the tech giant revealed that Jeetu Patel would be joining its Executive Leadership team and heading the newly-formed Cisco Security and Applications Group.

Cisco Systems has been on the hunt for the last three months for a leader for its new Security and Applications business group and on Monday announced Jeetu Patel would be taking on the challenge and joining Cisco's executive leadership team.

Patel, a longtime tech leader who is coming to Cisco from cloud content management and file sharing service Box, will be joining as senior vice president and general manager of Cisco's Security and Applications Group and will report directly to Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins. His start date is August 3, according to a Cisco spokesperson.

Patel will join Cisco's four other engineering leaders as part of the revamp the company announced in March, including Liz Centoni, who heads Emerging Technologies and Incubation, Core Hardware Platforms, led by Eyal Dagan; Mass-Scale Infrastructure, led by Jonathan Davidson; and Enterprise Networking and Cloud, led by Todd Nightingale.

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Specifically, Patel will head Cisco's efforts across its Collaboration, Security and Applications businesses to deliver a consistent, seamless experience for our customers and end users, Robbins said in a blog published Monday afternoon regarding the new hire.

"Over the past few months, it is clear that our collaboration, security and applications are core to building a secure, remote workforce. These businesses play a key part in keeping our customers connected, productive and secure. Under [Patel's] leadership, we will continue to drive even greater innovation around modern application development, security and the employee and customer experience," Robbins said in his blog post.

Cisco in March announced several major changes to its executive leadership team. Cisco veteran David Goeckeler, executive vice president and general manager of the Networking and Security business, revealed that he was moving on to become CEO of Western Digital. At the same time, Cisco announced Todd Nightingale as his successor, the firm's former senior vice president and general manager of Cisco Meraki. Nightingale became senior vice president and general manager of Cisco's $34 billion Enterprise Networking and Cloud Business, while 19-year Cisco veteran Centoni was promoted to lead the brand-new Future Technologies and Incubation group for Cisco. Former Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco's Service Provider Business Jonathan Davidson was named senior vice president and general manager of Cisco's then-new Mass-Scale Infrastructure Group, and at the same time, Cisco decided to combine its silicon group together with its hardware platform and optics team and named Eyal Dagan as its leader.

Senior Vice President of Cisco's Security Group Gee Rittenhouse will report to Patel, as will Cisco's interim Collaboration Group leader, Javed Khan, the Cisco spokesperson said.

Patel served as chief product officer and Chief Strategy Officer at Box for more than four years. Prior to that, he served as general manager and chief executive of the Syncplicity business unit of EMC and president of Doculabs, a research and advisory firm focused on collaboration and content management.