Simon Pollard Email & Phone Number

Company change following the acquisition of Ruckus/ARRIS by CommScope.Product Manager responsible for the technical and business management and marketing of Ruckus' range of LAN/DC-ToR Ethernet switches and solutions across EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).

Company change following the acquisition of Brocade's edge networking business by ARRIS.Product Manager responsible for the technical and business management and marketing of Brocade’s range of LAN/DC-ToR Ethernet switches and solutions across EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).

Product Manager responsible for the technical and business management and marketing of Brocade’s range of LAN/DC-ToR Ethernet switches and solutions across EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). Also responsible for regional management of Brocade's WLAN technology and sales partnerships with Aruba, Ruckus and Aerohive.

Reporting to the VP for pre-sales engineering operations team is responsible for the delivery of business and operational infrastructure to over 750 pre-sales engineers across Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa and South America.• Responsible for pre-sales organisational strategy, planning and reporting for a $4.5Billion business.• Drove the development of working and operational practices focused on improving the productivity and effectiveness of the pre-sales engineering team. o Created a collaboration environment based on social networking technologies for 750 engineers distributed across more than 60 countries. The result was greater information and best practice sharing across the pre-sales organisation. o Delivery of training and development programs for 120 senior technical staff and managers. o Transformed the SE skills tracking and resource planning processes to ensure better talent alignment and distribution across the theatre. o Managed the customisation, deployment and management of Salesforce.com for pre-sales engineers across Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa and South America. o Development and management of pre-sales escalation processes to ensure timely and accurate allocation of specialist opportunity support.• Content development and delivery lead for the CiscoLive (Networkers) events in Europe and the Middle East that host over 6,000 customers annually.

• Managed a diverse team of 13 consulting engineers that provided specialist support to the sales and marketing teams across a $6Billion business in Europe. o Technologies supported included campus switching, wireless LAN, service. provider core and access routers, cable networks, security and video productso Provided expertise in the key areas of new product introduction, technical sales training, strategic and tactical account support and competitive analysis.• Provided leadership, mentoring and personal development guidance to technical pre-sales staff across a broad range of experience and skills.• Established and managed Cisco technology liaison teams that provided a critical link between customers, sales and the product development teams ensuring a direct connection between product requirements and revenue growth.• Created internal and external business cases focused on the development and deployment of new product features and capabilities.• Extensive experience of developing and delivering virtual and live sales training designed to build self-sufficiency and scaling of message delivery.• Developed lab facilities that provided an environment for collaboration and solution innovation focused on driving customer business relevance in areas such as security, WLAN, campus networks and service provider routing.• Designed and deployed power saving systems and policies that cut pre-sales lab energy consumption by 40%.• Built and delivered the hands-on labs program for the CiscoLive (Networkers) customer events in Europe and the Middle East.

Responsible for the management of a range of Cisco products including;• Mid-range routing portfolio• Routing software suite• Mobile wireless data infrastructure solutions (Core, RAN, GGSN and SS7oIP)• ATM multi-service switches