Vish Iyer

Vish’s passion is engaging closely with customers, partners, and sales & services teams, and demonstrating how technology can solve all the new challenges and opportuities ahead. A leader in the ICT space, Vish leads Cisco’s APJ Service Provider (SP) business and their 360-relationship in the region.

Vish has deep experience in building carrier class infrastructure with top service providers in the region, coupled with his deep expertise in the enterprise space, puts him in the unique position to partner with SPs in monetizing their B2B space with profitable managed services offerings.

In Vish’s previous role, as the APJC leader for Architectures, he built a high-performance team that helped accelerate the software pivot in line with Cisco’s transformation from hardware to software to subscription across the portfolio.

He has scaled many teams and paved the way for sustainable multi-year growth in Cisco’s architectural business which has translated in driving sustainable recurring software business growth momentum for the region. They have also empowered clients to adopt next-gen infrastructure solutions and strengthened their relationship with Cisco.

In this age of partners, Vish actively collaborates with Tier 1 service providers, and distributors to create compelling joint offerings. These partnerships have significantly bolstered Cisco's market presence. Teams led by Vish have executed on transformation programs leveraging cloud, networking, infrastructure, and security in the largest and most demanding industries such as public services, manufacturing, construction, service provider, retail, banking & finance, food & beverages, and so on – all while delivering with quantifiable business outcomes. In line with Cisco’s overarching purpose, the team is driving an ‘inclusive future for all’ in Asia Pacific by being a partner of choice in the region’s digitization.

Vish aims to build a closer connect between university and industry to foster an innovation mindset among the student community in the region. He works with bodies such as ITU and institutions such as NUS and INSEAD School of Business in Singapore to help nurture young minds, inspire them to innovate, and to succeed as entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs.

He is directly involved in building Cisco India CSR programs including the ThingQubator platform, which is now India’s leading innovation program for universities and the Cisco Launchpad program. The latter started in India and has now been scaled globally to accelerate startups with disruptive technology ideas.

Vish is passionate about Cisco’s Networking Academy program, including GirlsInSTEM, which aims to equip the next generation and disadvantaged groups with job-worthy networking and cybersecurity skills; and also provides guidance for the programs at the Indian InsƟtute of Technology – Banaras Hindu University, Centre for Networked Intelligence at the Indian InsƟtute of Science (IISc), and NaƟonal University of Singapore, among others.

Vish holds a Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University.