CSCO Cisco Systems Inc

By Angus Loten 

Cisco Systems Inc. has hired a leader in digital enterprise strategies as its new chief information officer amid the tech giant's growing focus on software services for renewed growth.

Jacqueline Guichelaar, a former group CIO at Thomson Reuters Corp., oversees Cisco's information-technology infrastructure and application development as senior vice president and CIO, a company spokesman confirmed Tuesday.

She will also be focused on building the talent and skills required for a workplace driven increasingly by digital technology, the spokesman said.

Ms. Guichelaar officially took over the top IT post in mid-February, replacing the firm's longtime CIO Guillermo Diaz Jr., who remains at Cisco as its new senior vice president for customer transformation.

As CIO since 2000, Mr. Diaz led many of the tech firm's core IT-enabled business initiatives, developing its electronic commerce tools, sales and marketing and customer services, and cloud and software-as-a-service platforms.

In his new role, Mr. Diaz will lead an agile team to establish digital leadership, improve customer relationships and provide strategic advice, the spokesman said.

Cisco in recent years has sought to build up its software business as a recurring source of revenue rather than rely on one-time sales of routers, switches and other networking equipment.

In February, it reported $2.8 billion in second-quarter profit for the period ended Jan. 26, on $12.4 billion in revenue, up 7% from the same period a year ago.

The quarterly gains continued a five-quarter streak following two years of declines. Chuck Robbins, the firm's chairman and chief executive, credited the renewed growth to a strategy of "aggressively transitioning to a software model and accelerating our pace of innovation."

Ms. Guichelaar, who reports to Cisco's chief of operations, Irving Tan, had served as CIO at Thomson Reuters since November 2017, building and leading its transition to digital enterprise technologies. She left the company last September.

Thomson Reuters, which provides tools for corporate, legal and tax professionals and operates Reuters News, in December announced plans to cut more than 3,000 jobs over the next two years while shifting its business model away from producing content and into software services.

Before Thomson Reuters, Ms. Guichelaar held senior tech roles at Deutsche Bank AG, Lloyds Banking Group PLC and International Business Machines Corp., among other companies.

Write to Angus Loten at angus.loten@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 09, 2019 18:59 ET (22:59 GMT)

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