Channel People on the Move: Lumen, Intelisys, Palo Alto, Microsoft, Mitel
We also feature 8x8, Aryaka, Exabeam, LogMeIn, Forcepoint, Zoom, Optiv Security and more.
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In a shake-up at Lumen, Dave Young stepped in for the outgoing Garrett Gee as channel leader. Young will oversee channel partner relationships, as well as system-integrator, hyperscaler and digital venture units for the communications giant.
He talked to us in a Q&A about some hot news — the company’s ILEC sale, changes in partner program structure, and more.
LogMeIn‘s new chief revenue officer will make decisions that impact partners.
Bill Robinson will lead global sales, customer experience and business operations. The company says he will drive the unification of the customer experience, sold directly or via LogMeIn’s channel partners.
Robinson comes over from NICE inContact, the CCaaS company. There, he was executive VP of sales.
LogMeIn provides SaaS and cloud-based remote work toold for collaboration, IT management and customer engagement.
Michelle Tamras is the new director of partner success at service distributor TBI. She’s tasked with furthering support and service to TBI’s partner community.
You might know Tamras from a long career at AT&T, a key TBI provider.
There’s a good chance you know Christine Gassman from her days at Datto, or perhaps most recently at Cofense after it acquired Cyberish. There, she was director of North America channel sales.
Now you can find Gassman at Armor, the cloud security company for managed service providers. Her title is director of global channel engagement. Her job is to expand Armor’s channel footprint.
Upstack, the direct agency that has taken the channel by storm with large private equity investments and multiple acquisitions in 2021, named Nicholas Caruso (right) its head of global channels and alliances.
Caruso will build development teams for Upstack’s advisers (agents) and suppliers. He previously led Zayo Group’s channel.
Also joining Upstack are Angie Tocco (upper left) and Laura Dashney (lower left) via acquisition. Upstack last month bought Phoenix-based LanYap Networks. Tocco and Dashney, the co-founders, join Upstack as partners and managing directors.
Learn more about Upstack and it’s growing team.
Hatem Naguib is the new CEO at Barracuda Networks, a promotion from COO, a title he’s held since 2018. He also gets a seat on the board of directors.
Naguib told us Barracuda “has never been in a stronger position to take advantage of the opportunities ahead of us …”
Get the full skinny on Naguib’s move up to the top spot.
Meantime, the biggest reason he got the gig is because …
… former Barracuda CEO BJ Jenkins (left) slid into the role of chief executive at Palo Alto Networks. Jenkins was Barracuda CEO for nearly nine years, and will continue to serve on its board.
Jenkins called Palo Alto a “disruptor in network security” and the “multiplatform cybersecurity category leader.”
Read more about Jenkins’ move.
Palo Alto picked up another big name in Jas Sood, its new senior VP of enterprise sales. Sood comes to the company from HPE, where she was VP and general manager, North America infrastructure and services.
From his days as channel chief at CenturyLink and 8×8, John DeLozier (right) is one of the best-known people in the channel. Now he takes on a new challenge as president of Intelisys, the services distributor.
We had a great Q&A with him where he outlined his mission at the company.
Meantime, Kristy Thomas also is new to Intelisys. There, she will lead the customer experience initiative. Thomas is an alumnus of Talkdesk, Vonage and Masergy.
Intelisys’ parent company, ScanSource, the value-added distributor, promoted longtime employee Tony Sorrentino to president of North America. His last title was president, North America sales.
Sorrentino’s responsibilities include overseeing ScanSource’s North American hardware business, with plans to align it with the distributor’s POS Portal business.
Read why ScanSource CRO John Eldh thinks Sorrentino is up to the task.
The cable community and its partners knows Bill Steen well for his most recent gig at Comcast Business, where he was director of indirect channel and alliance partner marketing.
Now, Steen is taking on a new challenge as director of channel and field marketing at OpenText, parent of Carbonite and Webroot, the backup and security providers. He will lead the North America channel team for the company’s small, midsize and consumer division, focused on cybersecurity and resilience, data security and protection.
Steen also brings 13 years of experience at Level 3 Communications to the job.
Get the full story on Steen’s move.
Talkdesk, which provides cloud contact center and AI solutions, named Sydney Carey its new chief financial officer. The move came as the company announced $230 million in funding. Contact center is … hot.
Carey, who comes to Talkdesk from Sumo Logic, says the company has recently expanded its channel of resellers, cloud distributors, strategic alliances and AppConnect marketplace partnerships to more than 300 contracted partners and thousands of agents.
If you don’t know Carey very well, you will after reading this.
Shahid Ahmed has one of the coolest titles in this edition of Channel People on the Move — VP of new ventures and innovation at NTT. His background includes stops at Sprint, Accenture, PwC and Imagine Wireless.
NTT’s new Private 5G offer connects companies’ onsite and distributed devices and users to the cloud. Ahmed will lead the new portfolio of products and services associated with it.
Learn more about Ahmed’s role and Private 5G.
Speaking of NTT, NTT Application Security named Vlad Nisic (not pictured) its new VP of sales for EMEA during the Black Hat USA event.
Mitel‘s human resources department has stayed busy with a series of new hires.
Most notable perhaps is Daren Finney (lower right), the company’s new global channel chief. Finney, whose title is senior VP of global channel sales, has 25 years of experience in the business, most recently as Citrix’s chief operating officer for worldwide channel.
Also new to Mitel are, clockwise from upper right: Mohammed Kasmi, VP of research and development for service delivery; Finney; Virve Virtanen, VP of analyst relations and competitive intelligence; Marina de la Torre, VP of customer success; and Carlton Geckler, SVP of global cloud operations.
Here‘s where to learn more about these newbies.
Eric Martorano confirmed his exit from Nextiva this month, where he was chief revenue officer for the business VoIP and cloud communication platform provider.
Not yet indicating where he will land, Martorano said he would “focus on pursuing my next career opportunity outside the company, continuing to build, lead and drive industry impact.”
Read what Martorano has to say about the company he’s leaving behind.
Konica Minolta Business Solutions, No. 471 on the 2021 Channel Futures MSP 501, appointed Mike Faiers as its new chief technology officer. The company expects him to play a crucial role in strengthening its position in data, analytics and cloud services.
Faiers is a regular on top 50 UK IT leader lists, Konica Minolta said. He has 20 years of experience, including a career that started at an MSP and moved to Audi, where he led the introduction of the Audi R8 into the UK market.
Andrea Miner is the new director of channel sales at Everbridge, the critical event management provider. Miner was a big name at Tech Data, where she was director, vendor effectiveness and optimization.
In her new gig, Miner will be responsible for developing and implementing channel strategies, educating partners and sales teams, and working with regional sales managers.
Rachel Turkus is the VP of marketing and channel development at CyberReef. The NetFortris and Broadvoice vet will lead the company’s marketing team, including strategy, communications, enablement and digital marketing.
Turkus also is tasked with overseeing channel sales operations, including onboarding, training, engagement and incentive programs.
Bobby Hall is the new man with the plan at 8×8, replacing channel chief John DeLozier, who moved on to Intelisys. It was a promotion for Hall, who previously was 8×8’s VP of North America channels.
Hall’s long history in the channel has included stops at CenturyLink, Unify, Arrow, ShoreTel and Avaya.
Read more about Hall’s promotion.
Corel, the software company that specializes in graphics processing, says Michelle Chiantera will help spur its next phase of growth as chief marketing officer.
You probably know her from Cisco, where she was VP of Americas growth marketing and global partner, segments and industries.
At Corel, Chiantera and her team will support go-to-market initiatives to deliver growth across the company’s full software portfolio.
2nd Watch, the Seattle-based cloud migration and managed service provider, promoted Chris Garvey to chief operating officer. He’s moved up the ladder at 2nd Watch rather quickly, starting as executive VP of product and marketing in 2017, and jumping to EVP of cloud services at the beginning of 2021.
Garvey will oversee all of 2nd Watch’ss service teams across cloud enablement and managed cloud, encompassing the collective practice areas that “help fuel the company’s services and drive its solution road maps.”
Since the naming of Rodney Clark as its new channel chief, we’ve known for some time now that Gavriella Schuster would likely be leaving the business. We found out this month that it would indeed happen in August.
Schuster said she would step away from the software giant on Aug. 31 after 26 years with the company.
Schuster explained that she would become an adviser to various organizations, IT solution providers and other businesses. Included in her mission will be helping organizations advance their diversity and inclusion efforts, one of her life passions.
Dig deeper into Schuster’s next step.
CCI, the Utah-based company that helps service providers build new UC products via direct routing setup and tools for onboarding, monitoring and reporting, hired Kevin Francis as director of channel sales.
Francis has 27 years in the business, including stops at Verizon, Windstream and XO.
Greg Seale comes to BCN, the solution provider focused on multilocation businesses, as the company’s newest senior solutions engineer.
His previous employers include Windstream, EarthLink and XO Communications, part of a 30-year career in telecommunications and technology.
That’s Steve Harrington, new managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), for Aryaka, the SD-WAN provider.
Harrington, who comes from Talk Talk Business, takes the role vacated by Ian McEwan, who Aryaka recently promoted to CRO.
Harrington’s priorities will be reviewing go-to-market models, strategic hiring and supporting a growing number of EMEA clients.
AireSpring, the voice and data services provider, hired Matthew Curtis as a regional channel manager for Texas. His last gig was a sales manager for channel and enterprise at Ooma.
You know DCC Technology doing business under its Exertis brand. But perhaps you didn’t know the distributor just launched Exertis North America and said the longtime president and CEO of Jam Industries, Marty Szpiro, will lead it in the same role.
DCC created the new business to manage the operations of its Jam and Stampede acquisitions.
You’ll know much more after you investigate our full story.
Zoom continues to add to its channel team. The latest entry is Chris Mitchell, who gets the title of channel sales leader, Canada. He is responsible for leading all channel sales activities across Canada and will build out a new team of channel account managers responsible for strategic and regional partners across the country.
Before Zoom, Mitchell held channel and sales leadership positions at Cisco and RingCentral in Canada.
Explorium, which provides an automated externdal data platform, nabbed three new senior execs following its $75 million funding announcement.
They are, left to right: Tim Marsh, VP of alliances and channels, most recently at Mulesoft; Ajay Khanna, new chief marketing officer, from Reltio; and Sam Pugmire, chief revenue officer, who last called VMware home.
Peter Hunter joins Ottawa-based Field Effect, the global cybersecurity company, as chief financial officer.
The company says Hunter will play a major role in helping Field Effect get ready for “massive growth” and put it on the map as the “leading cybersecurity company in the world.”
His last job was CFO at Fullscript, one of Canada’s fastest-growing companies.
DataCore Software, the software-defined storage company, added to its leadership team.
On the left is Abhijit Dey, chief product officer. He joins DataCore from cybersecurity provider Agari, where he was senior VP of product management and R&D.
On the right, that’s Gregg Machon, VP, Americas sales. DataCore calls Machon a seasoned sales and channel exec with experience building profitable, leveraged channel sales models and programs within the storage industry. He most recently worked for Qumulo.
Data-first cybersecurity provider Forcepoint tapped Rees Johnson as its new chief product officer. He will play a key role as the company continues to deliver secure access service edge solutions to enterprises and government agencies.
Johnson will oversee the company’s entire product portfolio.
He has more than 20 years of product leadership experience in network security, cloud security and SaaS migration strategy. You might know him from McAfee or Symantec.
GreatHorn, the API-based cloud-native security solution, tapped Arthur Braunstein as CRO. He will oversee all revenue-generating activities and lead the growth of both direct and indirect sales.
Braunstein joins GreatHornn from Morphisec, where he was VP of U.S. sales for five years.
Bob Dunn takes the reins as VP of global partner programs at Hyland, the content services provider. It’s a job change for Dunn, who previously held a series of international positions at the company, including VP of international, associate VP for APAC and EMEA, and UK country manager.
Hyland’s partner community include multiple segments that support more than 400 VARs, solution partners, SIs and strategic alliance partners across many industries.
Mitsumi Distribution, based in Dubai, hired a new president.
It’s Mathew Thomas, who comes to the company from HP Middle East. There, he was VP and managing director for 11 years.
At Mitsumi, Thomas will work to drive continued growth across the Middle East and Africa, overseeing operations, managing partnerships and developing new revenue opportunities.
Optiv Security added three senior leaders to its team.
They are: John Ayers, VP of MXDR, who previously was chief product officer at Nuspire; Shane Cox, VP of security operations, most recently at Lumen, where he led MSS delivery of DDoS, managed firewall and more; and Rocky DeStefano, senior VP of innovation and development, who most recently was responsible for strategy and ongoing execution for SIEM at JP Morgan Chase.
Twilio, the communications-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) company, named Bader Hamdan global head and director, platform partnerships.
Hamdan tells Channel Futures he will be responsible for overall strategy and go-to-market for all platform partners, such as the big hyperscalers and Salesforce.
Hamdan is a Cisco and Google vet.
Reinvent Telecom, the Arizona-based provider of UC, SIP trunking, cloud contact center and more, expanded its team to support the growth of its white-label reseller partner program.
The new hires are: Amanda Newkirk (bottom left), partner success specialist, previously with Momentum Telecom; Kathie Sletton (upper right), billing analyst; Tommy Bigthumb (bottom right), accounting clerk — accounts payable; and Shabbir Mandviwala (top left), network engineer, previously with AT&T, CenturyLink and others.
Meantime, John Reynolds (center), a 14-year Reinvent veteran, was promoted to senior network engineer for IT and the internal and external networks for Reinvent and its parent company, Saddleback Communications.
A longtime ServiceNow partner has joined the digital workflow provider.
Erica Volini sports the new role of senior vice president of global alliances and channel ecosystem go-to-market operations. Previously she led Deloitte Consulting’s global human capital practice. Deloitte holds elite partner status with ServiceNow.
Customer had been asking ServiceNow to leverage its partners more.
“I am thrilled to be joining ServiceNow as we continue on our path to $15 billion in revenue and help our partners and customers with their digital transformation efforts,” Volini said. “I am passionate about helping organizations transform and redefining the very nature of how work gets done. I can’t wait to begin my journey with ServiceNow and our amazing partner ecosystem.”
Security analytics and automation company Exabeam appointed James Anderson as VP, EMEA channels. He will be responsible for driving Exabeam’s channel strategy and delivery in EMEA, helping the company’s channel team grow and provide support to its MSSP, SI and VAR partners.
Anderson is a 15-year industry vet with stops at Quest and One Identity Software.
You’re looking at Gregory Stuecklin, the new VP and general manager of North America at WSO2, the open source technology company.
Stuecklin is responsible for topline growth, go-to-market strategy, investments, and staffing the sales and regional marketing teams. He is a Microsoft alumnus.
Also new at WSO2 but not pictured is Shekar Hariharan, chief marketing officer. He previously led marketing efforts at Jitterbit, Oracle and SugarCRM.
You’re looking at Gregory Stuecklin, the new VP and general manager of North America at WSO2, the open source technology company.
Stuecklin is responsible for topline growth, go-to-market strategy, investments, and staffing the sales and regional marketing teams. He is a Microsoft alumnus.
Also new at WSO2 but not pictured is Shekar Hariharan, chief marketing officer. He previously led marketing efforts at Jitterbit, Oracle and SugarCRM.
The big names in the channel keep coming with the new hires and promotions. Lumen? Check. Microsoft? Check. Intelisys — we have them too.
The unofficial start to fall might be just a week away, but Channel People on the Move remains hot! Take, for instance, the leadership shuffle at 8×8, where channel chief John DeLozier stepped away to become president of Intelisys, while the company looked internally to fill his role.
Meantime, Mitel hired a slew of people to take on channel-facing roles, including a new partner boss. And Lumen swapped out one channel chief for another.
For companies that play more with VARs and MSPs, Palo Alto Networks and Barracuda made some big changes. Also, we finally learned what former Microsoft exec Gavriella Schuster will do next.
Hope you’ve done some finger flexing lately, because you’re mouse trigger and smartphone toucher are going to need it. We’ve got more than 40 slides featuring more than 50 people on the move in the slideshow above. As always, you don’t have to wait for our monthly gallery to come out; we have a webpage specifically devoted to channel people on the move. If it’s Lumen, Microsoft, Intelisys, Palo Alto – any company in the channel – you’ll find them there.
Miss last month’s edition? If so, you missed moves at AT&T, IBM, Fusion Connect, VMware and more.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Craig Galbraith or connect with him on LinkedIn. |
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