Cisco Americas Channel Lead to Retire

The top exec of Cisco’s Americas Partner Organization, Rick Snyder, will retire in July at the end of the company’s fiscal year. Cisco hasn’t named a replacement for Snyder, who has led Americas channel sales since 2015.

Cisco’s Rick Snyder

A company spokeswoman confirmed reports of Snyder’s retirement in a brief statement.

“Rick Snyder is planning to retire at end of the fiscal year,” she told Channel Futures.  “He will stay on to assist with the transition as we identify a new leader for the Americas Partner Organization.”

Snyder’s four-year run as channel chief for the Americas caps nearly a decade with Cisco, where he arrived after serving as president of the Americas at Tandberg, the maker of TelePresence, which the company acquired in 2010 for $3.3 billion. In his first assignment at Cisco, Snyder oversaw the integration of Tandberg. In 2015, Snyder took over the Americas channel organization from Wendy Bahr, after she was named worldwide channel chief.

Following last year’s departure by Bahr, an 18-year Cisco veteran, the company promoted Oliver Tuszik, who channel sales in Germany, to lead the global partner organization. Similar to Bahr, Snyder was well respected by partners, though his departure is the latest in a string of veterans that have moved on amid management shifts.

The news wasn’t surprising to Ben Johnson, founder and CEO of Liberty Technology.

“Healthy churn I think,” Johnson said. “But Rick will be missed for sure. Great guy.”

During his tenure as SVP of Americas channels, Snyder presided over significant change. He discussed the most recent changes in an interview with Channel Futures during the company’s Partner Xperience, a track held at Cisco Live last June in Orlando. In his keynote address at that event, Snyder’s advice was “Engage, Enable and Evolve.” He was referring to Cisco’s new software-defined networking (SDN) architecture, DNA Center, based on Cisco’s Application Centric-Infrastructure (ACI), designed to play a key role in enabling business transformation. As such, Cisco’s multiyear effort to flesh out its developer ecosystem with DevNet reached new heights.

“We’re focused on helping our partners build software adoption practices with what we call LAER, which stands for land, adopt expand and renew,” Snyder said during last year’s interview. “Like Cisco, many of our partners traditionally have been focused on land and renew, and now with the subscription-based model, we have to focus and make sure there is competency around adoption and expansion. We’ve been maniacally focused on helping our partners evolve and grow in that area.”

One example of how Cisco has helped certain partners address these competencies is through its Lifecycle Advisor program, focused on helping them build adoption practices.

“It’s a wildly successful program,” Snyder said at the time. “My goal is that ultimately any Cisco gold partner should have these life-cycle adoption practices. I think that any partner that is master-specialized in enterprise networking or collaboration or security should have a life-cycle adoption practice.”