The CEO merry-go-round has been in full swing this week, with SAP’s ex-chief executive Bill McDermott announcing late Tuesday (a few short weeks after stepping down from SAP’s helm) that he will take over as CEO at ServiceNow – the IT service management and SaaS giant – this year.
I'll soon be joining the talented colleagues of @ServiceNow! Congratulations to my dear friend John Donahoe – honored to succeed him. Fired up for this next chapter, to innovate with great customers & lead a company with limitless potential!!! https://t.co/bPiz16kUYK
— Bill McDermott (@BillRMcDermott) October 23, 2019
Jeff Miller, of ServiceNow’s board of directors, said he was “thrilled” at the appointment: “Bill will further enhance ServiceNow’s momentum and reputation as a digital workflows leader committed to customer success, and as a preferred strategic partner enabling enterprise digital transformation.”
(ServiceNow’s outgoing CEO, John Donahoe, will take over at Nike).
SAP, which has replaced McDermott with board members Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein, is not the only tech firm to be having a leadership shake up.
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Today, marks the close of an incredible chapter as I say goodbye to @Mitel and move on to my next executive role. Thank you, Mitel, for the awesome ride! Great people, great memories. Consider me your biggest and most loyal fan!
— Rich McBee (@richmcbee1) October 7, 2019
UcaaS heavyweight Mitel also recently lost veteran CEO Rich McBee, who this week announced that he would be taking over as chief exec. at Riverbed; the Thoma Bravo-owned wide area network (WAN) performance specialist. (Mitel’s replaced him with former Polycom CEO Mary T. McDowell).
See also: Mitel’s CEO on Hot Yoga, UCaaS, Elon Musk and Going Private
Private equity firm Thoma Bravo’s founder Orlando Bravo said, “Rich McBee has the ideal skills and experience to lead Riverbed through this next phase of growth while driving operational excellence. We are fully committed to Riverbed’s success, and look forward to continuing to deliver great value to Riverbed’s customers and partners, and maximizing the Company’s full potential in a $20 billion total addressable market.”
Datastax’s CEO Billy Bosworth has also bowed out. He told customers of the open source Apache Cassandra specialist that “privately, I was asking myself all the same hard questions I was asking of every other area in the company. Was I, as CEO, going to give us maximal effectiveness in our next phase? After many deep discussions with our co-founder, Jonathan, and the board, we all agreed that we wanted a new perspective to execute our vision.”
Day 1 off to great start: thx to all @DataStax for the warm welcome and to everyone @GCPcloud for the experiences there! https://t.co/BB0qfePgUt
— Chet Kapoor (@ChetKapoor) October 21, 2019
He is set to be replaced by former Apigee CEO and Google VP Chet Kapoor, in what looks like a coup for the company. Datastax has long been rumoured to be pursuing an IPO and Kapoor has pedigree on that front, having taken API management firm Apigee public before its acquisition by Google.
