Nutanix Channel Chief Foreman Is Out

Before joining Nutanix, channel chief Rodney Foreman – who signed on in January 2018 – and Lou Attanasio, executive vice president and chief revenue officer – an employee since November 2017 – had extremely similar resumes. Both had stints at IBM for more than 16 years, a stopover at Informatica for less than two years, and as of today, a brief encounter at Nutanix.

Attanasio left Nutanix in March, and according to the vendor’s PR team, Foreman is no longer with the company. [Channel Futures reached out to Nutanix but didn’t get a response about Foreman’s departure.] However, the exit of both Foreman and Attanasio comes on the heels of the company’s 31% stock plummet, or almost $3 billion in market value, in March. According to MarketWatch, at that time, the stock plunge followed a disappointing company forecast which was blamed on poor sales execution.

In an CNBC interview, on March 19, Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey talked about getting the company back on track by putting money, that was diverted from sales generation, back in the sales funnel, including expanded sales to existing customers.

Rodney Foreman

During the same time period, rival VMware’s stock was up 14 percent.

Has time taken the shine off of Nutanix?

As company channel chief, Foreman was responsible for global channel sales efforts that included developing innovative partner programs to deliver incremental revenue to the business. His global team was responsible for partner recruitment, channel programs and the overall channel strategy for the resell, OEM and GSI business.

After seven months with Nutanix, Foreman sat down with Channel Futures’ T.C. Doyle for a podcast, sharing his experience with the vendor to date, and discussing the company’s channel charter.

“It provides a program that doesn’t just favor the top partners in the industry or the biggest partners in the industry that we all know and love,” he said. “It also provides equal footing for smaller partners so that based on their relative size and investment they can also be successful with Nutanix.”

He said he was pleased with what was accomplished in his first seven months, pointing to the company’s channel charter; its new Velocity partner program designed to build momentum in the midmarket; and the new Nutanix Xpand partner demand center.

Bob Wallace will step in as interim channel leader.

“We want to thank Rodney for his contributions to Nutanix and wish him well as he pursues other opportunities,” the company told Channel Futures. “We are pleased that Bob Wallace, our VP of sales strategy, has agreed to step in and lead our global channel sales on an interim basis. Bob was formerly VP of channel, OEM and inside sales at Nutanix, and is well-positioned to continue managing our relationships with channel partners while we search for a permanent successor.” 

On Tuesday, Nutanix announced the general availability of Nutanix Karbon, its certified Kubernetes solution, and, just last week, it announced a partnership to deliver an integrated hybrid-cloud-as-a-service solution. The offering leverages Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud OS software including its built-in, free AHV hypervisor, delivered through HPE GreenLake.