Skype Snags Cisco Executive as CEO (CSCO)

If you have heard buyout rumors of Skype ahead of its IPO, this newest addition to the Skype team may have you scratching your head a bit.  Skype S.A. has just named Tony Bates as CEO and named him as a member of the board of directors of the company.  Bates was most recently Senior Vice President of Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO).

Bates has more than 20 years of communications and Internet leadership and most recently served as General Manager of Cisco’s Enterprise, Commercial and Small Business Division.  In the Cisco role, he was responsible for over $20 billion of annual revenue and managed over 12,500 employees worldwide. The resume portion of the press release also noted other attributes:

• driving force behind Cisco’s three key Enterprise architectures (Borderless Networks, DataCenter and Collaboration)
• reporting to Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers
• member of the senior staff responsible for charting the company’s global strategy
• served on the Cisco Development Council, the Video Council, and the Enterprise Business Council.
• also served as General Manager of Cisco’s Service Provider Group
• holds nine patents
• served on the boards of YouTube, TokBox, BubbleMotion and LoveFilm.

Cisco was recently rumored to be acquiring Skype.  Hiring away a key executive may cool some of those rumors, but the arguments could be made either way even if those rumors seem to have been false,

Getting a solid CEO from the ranks of Cisco is probably just one more feather in Skype’s hat.  Now the company just needs to convert more than 8.1 million of its 560 million users to paying customers.

JON C.OGG