Jeff White, president of India & SAARC and leader of India Board, Cisco

Cisco marked a new milestone in India with the appointment of a new leader last week. Jeff White, previously vice president for the company’s Service Provider business in the APJC (Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China) region, has taken on the role of president for Cisco India & SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), with responsibility for Cisco’s sales and operations in the area.

White will also take on the role of leader of a new India Board, which comprises senior executives from Cisco’s headquarters as well as India and will chart Cisco’s continued engagement with one of the largest emerging economies in the world.

Reporting to Jaime Valles, president of Cisco in APJC, White will partner with Faiyaz Shahpurwala, senior vice president, Industry Solutions and India Site leader, to drive innovation and talent in alignment with the national agenda to transform the economy through technology.

White will also be working closely with Wim Elfrink, executive vice president, Industry Solutions and Chief Globalisation Officer, who is also Cisco’s Executive Sponsor for India. Elfrink was one of the primary drivers for Cisco’s investment in the Globalisation Centre East in 2007 and was based out of Bangalore until 2011.

“Cisco is in a unique position to help the government, our customers and partners in India on their journey of transformation. With the combined resources of our many functions here, including sales, technical, engineering, services and many others, we can drive even greater local innovation with products, services, solutions and new service delivery models that are relevant for India. This is the vision for the next Cisco in India,” said White.

“I’m optimistic about the growth potential in India due to several trends, such as the massive urbanization, the young and vibrant population, a fast-growing middle-class and a government committed to investing in IT.”

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Tags: APJC, globalization, india

As Cisco continues to grow, there will naturally be management changes across the business—this gives us a real opportunity to empower smart, collaborative people with diverse skill sets to lead us into the next phase for the company.

Cisco’s leadership bench today already has such a breadth and depth of these capabilities that we remain focused on our internal talent pool to fill leadership roles as they become available.

Effective at the start of fiscal year 2013, Edzard Overbeek, SVP, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Greater China (APJC), will lead Cisco’s Global Services business from San Jose, CA, reporting directly to me.

I will continue to oversee the Services business until Edzard assumes his new role at the start of the fiscal year, and then I will focus full time on leading the daily operations of the company and aggressively driving our transformation.

Edzard has 12 years of demonstrated success at Cisco in geographic sales and channel leadership roles, most recently as the leader for our business in Asia and co-chair of the Emerging Countries Council, where he successfully drove adoption of new business models for the company. His background is ideally suited in the areas where we expect growth for the Services business.

The current services leadership team — Ed Baum, Nick Earle, Joe Pinto, Sameer Padhye and Parvesh Sethi—will report directly to Edzard once he assumes his new role.

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Tags: APJC, Change, COO, leadership, services