Internap Names Patricia Watkins as New Channel Chief

Internap Corp. (INAP) has appointed former Avaya and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) executive Patricia Watkins as vice president of Global Channel Sales, responsible for increasing partner productivity and improved relationship management for the Internet infrastructure services provider.

As channel chief, Watkins will also work to expand the Internap’s overall partner ecosystem to new regions as the company looks to meet growing demand for its hybrid infrastructure solutions, according to the announcement.

“Companies across industries—from ad-tech to e-commerce and financial services—are increasingly relying on IT infrastructure to deliver the speed and reliability needed to support business-critical and data-intensive applications,” said Watkins, in a statement. “With Internap’s full range of high-performance cloud, collocation and managed hosting solutions, we’re uniquely positioned to help our channel partners address this underserved customer demand.”

Watkins has been a player in direct and indirect enterprise sales for more than 20 years, and previously served as vice president of Sales at Avaya prior to her appointment at Internap. She also held several senior-level positions Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) from 2007 to 2013 and worked as an executive at Teradata and others, according to LinkedIn.

Watkins replaces Internap’s former channel chief Joseph Stagliano, who took on the Global Channel Sales VP role in December 2013. She will report to Peter Bell, Internap’s senior vice president of Global Sales, in her new position, according to the announcement.

“Our unique capabilities combined with channel-friendly policies and programs will enable us to rapidly expand into new markets and reach new customers,” said Michael Ruffolo, president and chief executive officer of Internap. “Patty’s proven track record of success building channel partner programs and developing long-term partner relationships will be critical to expanding this important route-to-market and ensuring partners have the right tools to attract and retain customers seeking high-performance infrastructure solutions.”