Cisco named former Microsoft communications executive Steve Clayton as the networking giant’s new chief communications officer and a member of Cisco’s executive leadership team, effective January 5.

Clayton spent 28 years at Microsoft, serving in various communication roles, with the most recent as VP of the company’s communications strategy. Clayton also worked as Microsoft’s VP of global public affairs, chief storyteller, and director of global cloud strategy.

Clayton’s tenure included work under Microsoft’s three historical CEOs: Bill Gates, Steve Balmer, and current CEO Satya Nadella. However, Microsoft recently named long-time company executive Judson Althoff as CEO of its commercial business, allowing Nadella to be "laser focused" on Microsoft's "highest ambition technical work,” including data center buildout efforts, systems architecture, AI science, and product innovation.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins highlighted the timing of the move.

“We are at a pivotal moment in our company’s history, as we look to help customers, partners, and governments around the world unlock the power of AI,” Robbins noted in a blog post. “Steve’s deep expertise and vision will help us further elevate Cisco’s story and cement our role as providers of the critical infrastructure for the AI era.”

Cisco is coming off a robust operating quarter that was bolstered by strong growth in networking sales and continued heat coming from its AI focus that offset a slump in its security business, echoing a trend set during its previous quarter.

Robbins was effusive on Cisco’s networking and AI results but blunt on its stagnating security business.

“None of us are happy about where we are right now, let me be clear about that,” Robbins said of Cisco’s security results during the earnings call. “But we think that it'll continue to accelerate through the year, and it'll come out of the year at a much higher rate. And then I think the normalization of this sort of mix-shift is probably gonna take us four quarters to get to where the year-over-year comparisons are sort of apples-to-apples on the mix side. … “We're going to just give you as much transparency as we possibly can.”

Clayton takes over for Heather Dickinson, who had been serving as interim head of communications at Cisco. Dickinson took that temporary position following the move by Maria Poveromo, who left that position two months ago. Poveromo had been in that role since mid-2021.