Cisco channel chief Oliver Tuszik switches roles to lead EMEA

Channel veteran Oliver Tuszik is moving on as Cisco’s global channel leader to head Cisco EMEA, the tech giant told CRN exclusively

Cisco channel chief Oliver Tuszik, who's been in that post for five years, is moving on to take on a new role to lead Cisco's EMEA business.

Tuszik is taking over for Cisco's current EMEA president Wendy Mars as of August 1, the start of the tech giant's 2024 fiscal year, Cisco told CRN. Mars is leaving the company to retire.

Tuszik will be relocating back to Germany for his new role and will continue to report to Cisco executive vice president and chief customer and partner officer Jeff Sharritts.

The networking vendor has not yet named a new channel chief to lead the global partner organisation, but Tuszik said his successor would be named in the coming weeks.

Tuszik told CRN he will still be close to partners since Cisco drives about 90 per cent of its business through the channel.

"The only difference is I'll be in a more operational engagement with our partners, and I will continue to do exactly what I did in my old role," he said.

"I will ensure that everybody can perform every day and we make it as smooth and as profitable as possible while we are driving the transformation … with security, software and SaaS."

Cisco named Tuszik SVP of global partner sales and routes to market in 2018. The tech veteran had previously spent five years as VP and general manager of Cisco Germany.

He joined Cisco in 2013 after nearly ten years at Computacenter Germany, five of those years as CEO.

Computacenter is one of Cisco's largest channel partners, and Tuszik headed Computacenter's networking business before becoming CEO. He spent several years in leadership roles at General Electric before joining Computacenter.

Five years is Tuszik's magic number, he said, having led Cisco Germany for five years and Computacenter as CEO for another half a decade.

"I think it's good to get somebody new, not because I would say I'm doing something wrong. But over the five years, you go through different phases," he said.

"For the first close to a year, you continue to learn and you want to learn before you make a decision but then you start to build your own strategy and then there is implementation and design that might take another 1-2 years. Then you have the chance to perform to really perform and scale for the next two years, which adds up to a total of five years."

Tuszik said he thanks Cisco partners for welcoming and supporting him and his team over the last four years and ten months.

"We've been able to have an exchange that was full of respect and sometimes even tough, but that's how strong teams work together. Respect for the individual, but always focus on being successful together, so a big thanks for the warm welcome and allowing a German to be part of this," he said.

And Cisco partners should know that not a lot will change in that respect, Tuszik added.

"Just the accent might be different from the person on the main stage [at Cisco Partner Summit]."