Dave West

SVP, President, Asia Pacific, Japan, Greater China

Dave West is President for Cisco Asia Pacific, Japan, and Greater China (APJC). This group comprises seven organizations operating across a diverse set of markets: Australia and New Zealand, ASEAN, India and SAARC, Korea, Japan, Greater China, and Service Provider. In this role, he is responsible for developing Cisco’s strategy, accelerating business growth, and ensuring Cisco APJC is the most trusted and relevant IT solutions partner and provider in the industry. 

Dave works closely with customers to understand the market transitions influencing their businesses, and within Cisco, works cross-functionally with teams to design and implement innovative go-to-market models for customers' multiyear digital transformations. He is passionate about driving a people-first culture, creating opportunities for employee growth, and building diverse, high-performing teams.   

Dave is a 20-year Cisco veteran with over 25 years of experience in the ICT industry. His most recent role was President and General Manager for Cisco Japan, where he managed all aspects of the Japanese market, and before that, he led Worldwide Sales for Enterprise Networks, with responsibility for the sales, solutions, and engineering motions to deliver innovation and transformation across Cisco’s core portfolio. 

Prior to that, Dave was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Architectures leader for Enterprise Networks, Data Center, Security, and Collaboration in Asia Pacific and Japan. He was responsible for capturing market transitions, delivering sustained competitive leadership, and driving growth across all technologies. He has held various leadership roles within the Worldwide Sales, Global Partner and Public Sector organizations. 

Dave is a former Marine Officer, graduated from the Virginia Military Institute, and holds an MS in Information Systems from the Naval Postgraduate School. 

Bidhan Roy

Managing Director, Head of Commercial Business & Small Business, Asia Pacific, Japan & Greater China.

With over 20 years of IT Industry Management experience in the Asia Pacific region, Bidhan’s experience spans across areas including business transformation, mergers & acquisitions, strategic planning as well as partner lifecycle management and stakeholder management, Bidhan is passionate about building high-performance teams and has led regional and global teams to achieve sustainable growth. For the past 14 years, has held strategic & leadership roles at Cisco across the Asia Pacific, Japan & Greater China (APJC) region, leading segments and function teams including Service Provider, Service Sales, Marketing and Commercial across India, ASEAN and APJC. As Managing Director & Head of Commercial & Small Business Segments for Cisco APJC, he is responsible for driving the regional strategy for these segments and leading diverse teams across the region to drive revenue growth. Prior to this, Bidhan was Regional Director for Commercial, SMB & Distribution for Cisco in Southeast Asia. In this role, he led the team to pilot several innovative and strategic approaches in terms of go-to-market, partner & distribution and marketing. Bidhan holds a BS in Chemistry, MBA from a premier management institute in India, and an Executive MBA from Harvard Business School. 

Sam Higgins

Principal Analyst at Forrester Research

Sam's professional engagements in the private sector, as well as state and federal government, assist him in addressing the unique technology challenges found in diverse industries such as financial services, healthcare, education, transportation, and mining.

Sam's research focuses on business and IT alignment, CMO and CIO collaboration, and the employee experience for IT teams and technology leaders as well as local and regional adoption of emerging technology and digital transformation. Sam specializes in delivery of advisory to clients in Australia and near-shore English-speaking markets across Asia Pacific.

Previous Work Experience

Sam has 20-plus years of strategic and tactical experience in the application of information and communications technology (ICT) to achieve modern digital business outcomes for large, complex organizations. Through his senior leadership roles in management and technology consulting, Sam has developed a strong capability in the delivery of strategies, roadmaps, and investment plans. This capability is supported by extensive knowledge of contemporary ICT markets gathered through data-driven industry research at leading business advisory firms, including recent experience advising on emerging trends such as operational technology, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and data science.

Education

Sam holds a Bachelor of Business in information systems with a specialized minor in marketing from Charles Darwin University and was a contributing author of the book Service Orientation: Winning Strategies and Best Practices, published in 2006 by Cambridge University Press.