# Veeam has a new marketing head - 4 months after the last one joined > Source: > Published: 2026-07-01 13:31:41+00:00 # Veeam has a new marketing head - 4 months after the last one joined Mika Yamamoto is [Veeam’s](https://www.blocksandfiles.com/ai-ml/2026/06/05/veeam-says-enterprises-need-ai-agents-to-monitor-ai-agents/5251570) new Chief Marketing Officer, replacing Allison Cerra who quit after just four months in the post. The story started when Rick Jackson retired in November last year as Veeam’s CMO after 3½ years in the role and 40 years in the technology field, including stints at VMware, Borland, BEA and NeXT Computer, Steve Job’s post-Apple gig. Veeam recruited Allison Cerra to replace Jackson, saying at the time “Cerra joins from Alkami Technology, where she has served as Chief Marketing Officer since 2021. Her prior leadership roles include Hewlett Packard Enterprise, McAfee, Intel, and Alcatel-Lucent, giving her a unique perspective across enterprise technology, cybersecurity, and cloud innovation.” Veeam CEO Anand Eswaren said at the time: “She’s built brands that connect deeply with customers, and teams that turn marketing into a growth engine. As Veeam enters its next phase of innovation helping every organization trust its data to safely power AI, her leadership and clarity of purpose will help us tell that story to the world. Allison is the kind of leader who makes things simple, real, and powerful, and I couldn’t be more excited to welcome her.” Now she has gone, and is now CMO at automated tax compliance supplier company [Vertex](https://www.vertexinc.com/en-gb), which says she is responsible for leading Vertex’s corporate brand, communications, product marketing, and demand generation teams. In this role, she drives creative and data‑driven strategies that strengthen the company’s market presence and deliver clear, compelling experiences for customers navigating complex tax and compliance environments. It [states](https://www.vertexinc.com/en-gb/company/our-leadership) “She previously served as Chief Marketing Officer at Alkami and McAfee and has held senior marketing leadership roles at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Alcatel‑Lucent, and Verizon,” leaving out the Veeam period. Vertex is a smaller company than Veeam, with quarterly revenues of just under $200 million which compares to Veeam’s September 2024 ARR of about $1.7 billion, equating to around $420 million a quarter then. Veeam is growing strongly so the current ARR number will be higher. Mika Yamamoto replaces Allison Cerra and is Veeam’s CMO and Customer AI Officer. She comes to Veeam from Freshworks (Chief Integrated Customer Growth Officer), F5 (Chief Customer Engagement and Marketing Officer), Adobe-owned and acquired Marketo (SVP & GM), SAP, Amazon, Microsoft, Gartner (Research VP) and Accenture. That’s a CV to die for and a good fit with Veeam's place and ambitions in the market. The CMO aspect is clear but the Customer AI Officer role is not. Veeam says “she will … own Veeam's customer-AI framework ensuring every customer interaction is relevant, informed, and builds on the last. As companies navigate their AI transformation amid constant hype, Veeam believes it is critical to provide customers with timely, relevant clarity and a point of view. Yamamoto will lead that work, setting strategy to help customers maximize the impact and security of their data with Veeam's solutions providing the timely intelligence behind every customer experience.” Yes, well, it sounds like marketing. Yamamoto said: “Veeam is doing something genuinely unique, ensuring that a core asset, data and AI, can deliver remarkable impact for their customers. Organizations are putting AI to work across every function in their businesses. They need complete visibility, control, and security over the data behind their agentic and human-driven processes on a single trusted platform.”