Tony Bates is Skypes Chief Executive Officer. He is responsible for overseeing the companys direction and strategy and is ultimately responsible for its performance.

Before joining Skype, Bates was senior vice president and general manager of Ciscos Enterprise, Commercial and Small Business Group. Prior to that, he was senior vice president and general manager for the Service Provider business unit, and previously vice president and general manager of Ciscos high-end router business.

He has also served as a member of the board of YouTube, Inc.

Prior to working at Cisco, Bates spearheaded the backbone-engineering strategy for Internet MCI (MCIs national IP backbone). He has more than 20 years of experience in the Internet and telecommunications industries, and

has published 12 IETF RFCs in the areas of Internet Routing and Operations, and he holds nine patents in the area of Layer 2 and Layer 3 innovations.