Egnyte Hires Former EMC, Avaya Exec as CMO

Egnyte believes adding a chief marketing officer (CMO) to its C-suite will help it expand into new markets, both domestically and internationally — so it hired one.

The Mountain View, California-based file-sharing company this week said it has appointed Isabelle Guis as its CMO. She will report directly to Egnyte founder and CEO Vineet Jain.

Guis most recently worked with EMC as the company’s vice president of marketing for the Public Cloud Solutions Group and Enterprise Storage Division. Prior to that, she served as Big Switch Networks’ vice president of marketing and was the founding chair of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF). She also held leadership positions at Avaya, Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Nortel Networks.

“My recent focus on the software-defined data center (networking and storage with Big Switch Networks and EMC) and on the cloud industry (at EMC) has helped me understand the intricacies of this technology, which has also helped me to understand the gaps that Egnyte could fulfill in this dynamic and fast moving ecosystem,” Guis told Talkin’ Cloud.

“The experience I gained in each of these markets and the best practices I have learned from my industry leaders will help me empower our field and partners (channel and technology) to scale and deliver a best-in-class services to our customers,” she said.

Working together with Jain, Guis plans to communicate Egnyte’s strategy and thought leadership to its customers and partners, and the market, “as well as be a sounding board on future offering development to come.”

“The company already has a lot of great things in place, and I see my role more around increasing our awareness and differentiation in an industry where a lot of players exist, but few secure enterprise-grade solutions are offered,” she said. “I will also look at re-structuring our go-to-market approach to timely answer market needs and help our field and partners (channel and technology) be more effective.”

Guis believes Egnyte’s channel partners can “play a crucial role in scaling our business and customizing our solution to fit the most stringent and complex environments as well as deliver our offering faster to customers of all size globally.”

“That being said, we want to continue to build a strong marketing engine to support our channel and sales teams moving forward, expanding our reach across the United States and EMEA,” she said.

This hire follows the appointment of Ian Whiting as the company’s president of field operations — a decision that was announced in August of this year.

Follow CJ Arlotta on Twitter @cjarlotta and Google+ for further updates on the story above — or if you just want to say hello.