Sonus Networks Stacks New Team With Avaya, Novell Alums

A number of major executives fled Avaya in the past year

Wes Durow, Sonus' vice president of global marketing, came over from Fonality, where he'd been CMO since 2010, and was previously vice president of marketing at Avaya and Nortel. Peter Polizzi, Sonus' senior director, channel technology operations, came aboard after a stint as senior director, worldwide channel technical sales operations at Avaya. And Nancy Maluso, Sonus' vice president and general manager, communications applications, was vice president of unified communications product marketing at Avaya.

All three executives joined Sonus in November 2011. Other key hires made by Abbott's team since then include Pierre-Jean Chalon, Sonus' APAC sales vice president, who joined in December from Greenpacket and was previously at Motorola, and Michael Benson, Sonus' enterprise sales vice president, who came over from CA Technologies in January 2012.

[Related: Avaya Channel M&A: Transcend United Buys RTS Unit ]

Earlier this month came Joseph McLaughlin, vice president of global channels, who's tasked with building Sonus' channel strategy alongside Abbott. McLaughlin, who is based in Atlanta, was most recently vice president, global channels at Novell, and also held senior sales and channel roles at BMC, Open Text and IBM earlier in his career.

Abbott abruptly left Avaya in June 2010, shortly after the company completed the first stages of its integration of Nortel's former enterprise unit. Known as a channel advocate, Abbott had been at Avaya since May 2008, and he was confirmed as the new global sales chief at Sonus in May 2011.

Sonus serves both service provider and enterprise customers, and its expertise spans VoIP trunking and access solutions, mobility, session border control, UC, PBX integration and call center transformation.

Based in Westford, Mass., the company reported $259.7 million in revenue for its fiscal 2011, including $52 million in total session border controller revenue.