Cisco’s SVP of Security Jumps Ship for Google Anthos

Longtime Cisco executive Jeff Reed has left the company and accepted a position at Google as VP of product for Anthos, the cloud provider’s hybrid cloud platform. His departure comes just four months after taking over as SVP of security at Cisco where he was, until recently, heading up the company’s emerging secure access service edge (SASE) platform. Longtime Cisco executive Jeff Reed has left the company and accepted a position at Google as VP of product for Anthos, the cloud provider’s hybrid cloud platform. His departure comes just four months after taking over as SVP of security at Cisco where he was, until recently, heading up the company’s emerging secure access service edge (SASE) platform. “Today I am excited to announce I have joined Google Cloud as the new VP of product for Anthos,” Reed wrote in a post on LinkedIn over the weekend. In a statement, a spokesperson for Google confirmed that Reed had joined the company but did not disclose the extent of his responsibilities. What is known is Reed’s position involves Anthos, which Google announced back in 2018 and launched in April 2019, as a way to help customers transition to the cloud more easily. The fully-managed platform is based on Kuberenetes and is designed to run on-premises or in multiple clouds including AWS and Azure. Reed’s move to Google brings to an end a nearly decade-long career at Cisco where he held positions in the company’s Ethernet switching technology group, unified access, SDN, and security businesses. In August, Reed took over as SVP and GM of cloud and network security. While in the position, he oversaw the advancement of the company’s SASE platform, which ties together elements of SD-WAN and managed security into a single cloud-delivered offering. The Gartner-coined product category has become a point of fierce competition with every major networking and security vendor — Palo Alto Networks, VMware, and Fortinet to name a few — entering the market. Cisco launched its own SASE platform built around its Viptela SD-WAN, Umbrella cloud security, and Duo identity management platforms back in May. It remains unclear who will fill Reed’s shoes now that he’s moved on to Google. At the time of publication, Cisco had not provided a statement regarding Reed’s departure or who will take over the cloud and networking security business unit.