In his role as Collaboration Technology Director, Johan Van Puymbrouck is responsible for driving the technical aspect of Cisco's Collaboration portfolio for the EMEA markets. He manages a team of highly specialized architects and managers. Johan also represents the unique EMEA requirements towards Cisco's Collaboration Business Units. Every year, the EMEA Collaboration operation represents >> 1 Billion USD in product and services, operated either direct or via partners. He is a fan of complex topics like compliance & privacy, monetisation of Collaboration APIs and codesigning product strategies for cloud deployments.
Since joining Cisco in 1999, Johan has held various positions, including engineering, business development, sales and management. A pivotal moment happened when Johan joined the Cloud focused team in 2009, only 1 year after Cisco acquired Webex. He thoroughly understands the SaaS/Subscription and on-premise business in context of the EMEA (with all of its languages, cultural differences and market access challenges). Johan is a fan of data science and is on a mission to transform the EMEA SE organization to be much more data driven.
Johan was also responsible for go-to-market strategies for various collaboration products in EMEA and has been awarded the top 1% tech champions reward (Club Cisco) in 2012. During his leadership roles, he received multiple manager excellence awards, making him part of the top 10% of Cisco people managers.
Outside of work, Johan cares deeply about ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) and kids with special needs. He is an avid book reader and thrives on change or a good challenge that requires grit. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Electro-Mechanical engineering and a master's degree in Mechatronics (engineering), ran his own VoIP broker business startup and is a proud online gamer with his kids during the weekend. He is also an advisor to the university of Royal Holloway (school of management) on their digitization program.