Telarus Brings Back Level 3, Equinix Alum, Kick-Starts Cloud Specialty Practice

Telarus has hired its own “chief cloud evangelist.”

Telarus’ Koby Phillips

Koby Phillips rejoins the company after a one-year hiatus to work as vice president of business development for cloud at Equinix. Partners will look to him for help designing, presenting and selling cloud infrastructure solutions, such as colocation, storage and virtual desktop services. He may at times represent partners in customer meetings.

Phillips was Telarus’ regional vice president of the Mountain West region before moving to Equinix.

“There is only one person I know who understands how to sell complex cloud infrastructure, how to inspire our sales partners, and how to lead a channel development team with optimism, drive and strategic thinking, and that person is Koby Phillips,” said Scott Forbush, Telarus’ senior vice president of sales. “During the many years we’ve worked with Koby, we were able to see firsthand his ability to educate customers and agents in a way that is rare in this industry. Our partners love Koby for his ability to listen, ask questions, and carefully step customers and sales partners through the design process.”

Telarus’ Scott Forbush

Telarus is adding cloud to a list of specialty technology practices, including cybersecurity, contact center and IoT.

“Our specialty groups are the key resources that allow our sales partners to scale and lend additional credibility and support to help close the more complex deals under their brands without having to shoulder additional overhead,” Phillips said. “I look forward to heading up this new group and continuing the momentum Telarus has been building with its partners. I also look forward to expanding our cloud ‘virtual engineering’ tools, continuing to expand our portfolio of cloud suppliers, building our cloud boot camp educational content. Most of all, I look forward to working with our partners to make them trusted advisers for their customers.”

Phillips served in a similar capacity – business development executive of cloud and content – at Equinix. Telarus says Phillips was one of the company’s top sales people for global interconnectivity. He spent another four years at Level 3 Communications as a Northwest channel sales manager. Another former employer is Integra Telecom, where Phillips also managed indirect sales.

Telarus’ Roger Blohm

Executive vice president Roger Blohm, who leads Telarus’ business development teams, said Phillips will make partners look good and enable them to secure deeper levels of business with their customers.

“We are excited to have Koby back on our team to head up our cloud specialty practice. Everyone who knows Koby understands how well he blends the knowledge of technology with sales strategy; it’s exactly how he became the No. 1 partner development manager for Telarus and top performer everywhere he has been in the past,” Blohm said. “Now he’s going to bring his understanding and experience selling global could infrastructure projects to our sales partners and work with them on how to have these initial conversations. Having him available to talk to end users, under the partners’ brand, will allow us to increase our sales momentum into the public cloud, private cloud, managed services, global cloud interconnectivity, business continuity and disaster recovery.”

Check out a video interview Telarus conducted with Phillips at the beginning of his first tenure with the company.

Telarus two weeks ago announced a supplier agreement with DynaLink Communications for its various CLEC offerings. The master agent in November announced its expansion into the United Kingdom under the leadership of Greg McVey.

Telarus also recently celebrated Nextiva recognizing it as its top performing master agent.