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Conrad Clemson

Senior Vice President, SP Platforms & Applications

Service Provider Platforms & Applications

Conrad Clemson is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco’s Service Provider Platforms and Applications (SPPA) Business, with responsibility for Video, Mobility, and Network Function Virtualization. He leads a global team of engineers, architects, and product line managers and oversees market acceleration and development operations across the expansive technology portfolio.

Conrad is a transformational leader who is turning new ideas and technologies into assets in the Cisco Service Provider (SP) business, helping pay SP’s, content providers and media companies to innovate and lower costs while driving revenue by transforming their operations & services with cloud technology and software-based functions. With a vision to show customers how to capture new opportunities created by the rise of cloud, virtualization, and evolving business models, he is responsible for developing an integrated SPPA strategy that spans the network by delivering a unified, cloud-based software platform while driving profitability, efficiency, and a sharpened portfolio.

Prior to his current role, Conrad served as the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco’s SP Video Software and Solutions group where he focused his tremendous technical knowledge, and strategic planning and leadership skills to advance all areas of Cisco’s video software portfolio, from content security to Media and Over the top (OTT) delivered services. In the Video space, Conrad has both driven organic innovation across these business as well as leading and integrating acquisitions. Conrad has incorporated a “cloud first” mindset across the team and and applied it through the extensive video software and solutions portfolio.

Before joining Cisco, Conrad was the CEO of BNI Video, a startup which developed two major products that offer video back-office and content delivery network (CDN) analytic capabilities for SP’s. Conrad also completed a successful one-year relationship as Entrepreneur in Residence with Charles River Ventures prior to joining BNI. He earlier served as Senior Director of Engineering at Motorola; Senior Vice President of Technical Operations at Broadbus; Executive Vice President and Vice President of Engineering at Gotham Networks; and VP of Engineering at Lucent Technologies.

Throughout his career, Conrad has developed and executed a variety of successful product and solution strategies, with an emphasis on leading technology offerings. He is a seasoned SP Executive with over 20 years of experience and holds a BS in physics from the College of William and Mary, and performed graduate studies at the School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Virginia.

Articles

November 21, 2017

SP360: SERVICE PROVIDER

Physics and an Innovation Mentality

To me, innovation is fast, intense, and purpose driven.  It is about adopting an experimental mentality and thinking about what we can do different today to create a better outcome for tomorrow. More than anything, it is about making those ideas happen. I was a physics major in college. Ever the sci…

October 26, 2017

SP360: SERVICE PROVIDER

Securing the Video Streaming Business

It is that time of year again; leaves are turning, the air is crisp, and every week teams from the National Football League line up to participate in the ‘ultimate team sport’, American football.  As a lifelong fan, I watch every Patriots game and I am certainly not alone. It is that diehard devotio…

Connecting with Customers at IBC

I came back from IBC week in Amsterdam amazed by the Cisco team’s hard work and energized by what we heard from customers. In all, we hosted more than 500 customer meetings in the Cisco booth and gave over 200 demos across our various product offerings. In case you weren’t able to join us, here is a…

September 12, 2017

SP360: SERVICE PROVIDER

Strong Partners Make Strong Solutions

Authored by Tracy Geist, Head of Global Partner Strategy – Service Provider Video  It’s been 9 months since I joined Cisco to lead efforts around partner strategy for video.  Having spent more than 25 years in the world of digital television, pay-tv, and the evolution of video distribution and…

September 1, 2017

EXECUTIVE PLATFORM

The Yin-Yang of Video-Aware Networking

A few weeks ago, 55,000 of my closest media, entertainment, and technology colleagues and I traveled to Amsterdam to attend IBC. IBC is a very special show where the worlds of technology and media collide. As the industry continues to evolve at warp speed, IBC this year proved to be an exceptional v…

Making IP Video Better Than Broadcast

As we wrap up the summer vacation season and settle back into work and school, I can’t help but reflect back on my personal summer vacation and share a few observations. My family and I had the chance to travel and while we were on the road, away from home, I shared with my wife that, in this bold n…

Inviting Customers to Hack our Infinite Video Platform

I like to think that I am pretty passionate about technology. And I like to work with others who share my passion. So when I hear about a group of 150 engineers working 24-hours straight in a race to make our products better…that gets my attention. On April 26 & 27, our Infinite Video Platform (…

Digital Transformation of India

Later this month, I will be traveling to India to meet with customers and connect with our Cisco Service Provider engineering teams. I always look forward to my trips to India. Each time I return, I find myself in awe of the pace of technology adoption in India, in general, and in particular, the ra…

Key Takeaways from Mobile World Congress

Mobile is everything and everything is mobile. On Day 1 of Mobile World Congress (MWC), Chuck Robbins succinctly described the “mobility explosion,” as a driver for innovation and a means for anyone and everyone to take advantage of the incredible advances we are seeing in technology. This explosive…