30 Notable IT Executive Moves: November 2017

On The Move

The channel saw a changing of the guard at several vendors and solution providers during November, with a handful of IT powerhouses naming new CEOs and channel chiefs. But no executive moves went more widely noticed than the changes at Hewlett Packard Enterprise – where Antonio Neri was announced as CEO Meg Whitman's successor – and Dell EMC, where Joyce Mullen is set to take over for recently promoted global channels president John Byrne.

A slew of other notable leadership changes took place elsewhere during the month, including telecom services provider West Corp appointing a new CEO and Carbon Black tapping a Microsoft veteran as channel chief.

In the following slides, check out our picks for the 30 most significant executive moves affecting the channel in November.

Antonio Neri

Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman will step down from her current role as of Feb. 1, 2018, after more than six years at the helm of the channel giant. Replacing her at the helm is longtime HPE executive Antonio Neri, who took over the Enterprise Group in 2015 and was named president in June.

Partners who spoke with CRN cheered the appointment of Neri, whom they see as a pro-channel leader whose strong technical background will drive new software-defined services and products from key acquisitions, such as Aruba Networks, SimpliVity and Nimble Storage.

Whitman, who is widely credited for the vendor's remarkable turnaround and recognized by many partners as a channel champion, will remain on the HPE board of directors. She had held the CEO role since September 2011, during which time she oversaw the successful separation of Hewlett Packard into HPE and HP Inc.

"The company had no focus when Meg became CEO," Raymond Tuchman, CEO of Experis Technology Group, told CRN. "She saved the company by splitting HP Into two and making HP Enterprise a more nimble and agile company. Meg has left the company in great shape. I think Antonio is going to bring a lot of good energy and take the company to the next level and accelerate the growth of HPE."

Joyce Mullen

With Dell EMC President of Global Channels John Byrne now in charge of the vendor's North America commercial sales, 18-year Dell veteran Joyce Mullen will have big shoes to fill as the company's next channel chief.

Mullen will run a combined OEM, IoT and Global Channels organization. She has overseen the company's IoT solutions division for the past year, and had already been vice president and general manager of Global OEM Solutions since 2012. President and Chief Commercial Officer Marius Haas called Mullen one of Dell's most promising executives.

"She is on it like a pit bull," said Haas. "We are excited that we have this talent in-house, and we are excited about the next phase of the journey we are embarking on."

Dell saw partner sales leap to 55 percent of an estimated $78.5 billion in overall sales under Byrne's watch, whereas partner sales were only 33 percent of its commercial business prior to the EMC acquisition.

George Hope

George Hope joined Hewlett Packard Enterprise following its $650 million purchase of SimpliVity last year, and now the former channel chief will become HPE's vice president of worldwide distribution.

Hope will be responsible for all global distribution relationships, reporting to new HPE Global Channel Chief Paul Hunter. He built a strong track record of success in nearly two decades as a channel executive and most recently helped drive massive sales growth at hyper-converged storage startup SimpliVity.

Before joining SimpliVity in 2014, Hope spent three years as director of EMC's U.S. channels sales arm for the U.S. for EMC and several more as senior director of global channels for EMC's Isilon network-attached storage division.

Joel Trammell

The leadership shuffle continued at Black Box, whose board of directors appointed Joel Trammell to replace E.C. Sykes as CEO of the solution provider.

Sykes, who will retire, departs after the telecom specialist saw revenue decline to $194.2 million for the most recent fiscal quarter ended Sept. 30, down 11.2 percent year over year from $218.8 million. Black Box also saw its stock price fall from $15.35 to $3.00 over the past year.

Trammell has been on the Black Box board since June 2013, during which time he also served as CEO of business insight software developer Khorus. He is also a managing partner of Lake Austin Advisors and private equity firm Lone Rock Technology Group.

Patrick Sweeney

Longtime SonicWall executive Patrick Sweeney stepped into the CEO position at Talari Networks, pledging to move toward a 100 percent channel sales model and particularly rely on partners in the fast-growing SD-WAN market.

Sweeney, who served for 16 years as vice president of marketing and product management for security vendor SonicWall (acquired by Dell in 2012), succeeds Mark Masur, who will remain board chairman at the company.

Under Sweeney, Talari aims to work with a broader base of managed service provider, reseller and agent partners through expanded training programs.

Bay Young

Former EMC executive Bay Young was named president and COO of vCore Technology Partners, as the solution provider looks to better divide managerial responsibilities amid the company's fast growth.

Steve Leavitt, who previously served as CEO and president of vCore, will remain with the company as CEO. He and Young worked together at EMC for four years. Young most recently held the position of senior vice president for EMC's Western U.S. enterprise sales.

Young plans on spending his first weeks at vCore leveraging his relationships to attract more talent to his new team. The solution provider said revenue in 2017 is anticipated to increase 42 percent, year over year, to $85 million before growing to $100 million in 2018.

Diane Bryant

Former Intel Group President Diane Bryant, who spent five years overseeing the vendor's $17 billion Data Center Group, was named COO of Google Cloud. She has also held corporate vice president and CIO titles.

Bryant's focus during her years at Intel included prioritizing cloud computing, networking virtualization and artificial intelligence solutions. She currently serves on United Technologies' board of directors.

"I can’t think of a person with more relevant experience and talents," Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene wrote in a blog post. "She is an engineer with tremendous business focus and an outstanding 30-year career in technology."

Christopher Skinner

Data and systems security provider SpiderOak tapped Christopher Skinner, most recently the chief innovation officer at online consumer hub Raise Marketplace, as its next CEO. He has an extensive background in strategic sales and marketing leadership, holding top roles at companies like Centro, United Airlines, eSurance and Vodafone.

At SpiderOak, which has core offerings built around encrypted storage and messaging applications, Skinner will focus on expanding the company's marketing presence and pushing its enterprise security platform forward.

"Christopher is a transformative leader with a powerful track record in building and scaling companies for massive growth," SpiderOak board chairman William Wolf said in a statement.

Todd Osborne

New Relic hired Todd Osborne, a former channel executive at Ctera Networks, Virtual Instruments and Oracle, as the APM software company's new channel chief.

Officially New Relic's vice president of alliances and channels, Osborne replaces John Gray, who left in May to take a post with cloud monitoring software developer Datadog. He'll work to increase partner sales and improve partner development at a company that has traditionally done most of its business direct.

The New Relic channel program's current provisions include partner training, enablement, revenue sharing and marketing support.

"There's a tremendous opportunity in this next wave of growth for New Relic," Osborne said in an interview with CRN.

Richard Wagner

Public sector solution provider ManTech promoted Richard Wagner to be the next president of the company's Mission, Cyber and Intelligence Solutions (MCIS) Group, effective Jan. 1. Wagner's predecessor, Bill Varner, who is retiring, had presided over the MCIS business since 2009.

Wagner has been at ManTech since June 2015. He most recently served as executive vice president and COO of the MCIS Group after jumping over from the company's $220 million Advanced Technical Solutions division.

Before that, Wagner spent more than 15 years at private defense contractor TASC and has more than a decade of engineering and program management experience with the U.S. Department of Defense, where he worked at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in California.

Heather Tenuto

ShoreTel veteran Heather Tenuto was hired as vice president of channel services for Office Depot, where she'll work to help the retail giant establish a reseller channel under former Verizon channel chief Janet Schijns, now the company's chief merchant and services officer.

At ShoreTel, which was acquired by Mitel in September, Tenuto served as vice president of channels. She originally joined the telecom services provider during its 2012 purchase of M5 Networks, where she spent five years in a number of roles that included sales, operations, marketing and channel management.

Office Depot acquired solution provider heavyweight CompuCom in October with the vision of selling the company's technology services and help desk solution, Tech-Zone, within its widespread footprint in the SMB market. CompuCom's core business dealings have traditionally involved the enterprise market.

Kevin Kennedy

Tech Data promoted IT industry veteran Kevin Kennedy to senior vice president of sales for Americas Enterprise Solutions.

For the past six months, Kennedy had been vice president of the distributor's HPE supplier solutions, where he oversaw the group's sales strategy. He joined Tech Data from Dell EMC, where he was director of global distribution for two years, and has previously worked at VCE, Merrill Lynch and Arrow.

Kennedy will report to Jeff Bawol, senior vice president of the company's Americas Enterprise Solutions division, in the new role. Tech Data is seven months into its two-year integration plan for Avnet Technology Solutions, which was bought for $2.6 billion in a deal that closed in February.

Raja Koduri

Intel added AMD veteran Raja Koduri to the company roster, tapping him to lead the its newly formed Core and Visual Computing Group and drive initiatives around edge computing.

Koduri will become the chief architect and senior vice president of the Core and Visual Computing Group and general manager of edge computing solutions at the chip giant, where he look to bolster Intel's integrated graphics prowess in the PC market. He has experience with graphics across multiple platforms, including PCs, game consoles, professional workstations and consumer devices.

Koduri most recently served as senior vice president and chief architect of AMD's Radeon Technologies graphics division. He was also Apple's director of graphics architecture from 2009 to 2013.

Todd DeBell

ForeScout global channel chief Todd DeBell left his post at the security vendor just months after he oversaw the creation of a partner program to support solution providers in the IoT security space.

DeBell served as ForeScout's vice president of global channel sales for 17 months, driving professional services to the channel and prioritizing a regional focus for partners, after joining the company from FireMon, where he held multiple channel roles.

"I am very proud of the work the ForeScout global channel team accomplished," DeBell said in an email to CRN. "I am looking forward to speaking with you soon about my next opportunity."

DeBell didn't respond to questions about the timing or reason for his departure. ForeScout confirmed his departure and said its worldwide channel sales would continue to be overseen by his supervisor, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Commercial Sales Brian Gumbel.

Peter Evans

Filling a role that had been vacant since CMO Steve Perkins left in December 2016, Peter Evans will focus on moving Optiv toward marketing campaigns that address broad market needs and business problems.

Evans most recently spent nearly two years as the CEO of software startup Pristine. Before that, he was vice president of global marketing for HP servers, CMO for Dell's $12 billion enterprise solutions business, and senior vice president of marketing for Internap Network Services, No. 78 on the 2017 CRN Solution Provider 500.

Evans said his career experience provides him with a first-hand perspective on how vendors work and what's needed to create an effective channel program.

"There's 1,500-plus vendors, and there's more confusion than ever before," Evans told CRN. "The market is crying for a different voice to solve a different kind of problem."

Sean Catlett

Optiv's second executive addition was Sean Catlett, who fills the newly created vice president of emerging services position at the security solution provider.

Catlett spent the past year as CEO of startup Pharos Security. He has a deep security background that includes experience as senior vice president of cybersecurity detection and response at Fidelity Investments, global head of threat and vulnerability management at Barclays and nearly four years as a network security-focused senior vice president at Bank of America.

Catlett's new role at Optiv will see him in a more consultative role, building multivendor bundles that proactively address customer needs in emerging areas.

Eli Kalil

Eli Kalil, formerly Mimecast's top channel executive, was appointed channel chief of Unitrends' newly formed partner program.

As vice president of global channel sales at the disaster recovery company, Kalil will look to focus on aligning Unitrends' sales and marketing approaches with the rest of the business and develop a more targeted, cohesive channel program.

The new partner program, which will be launched in the fourth quarter, will be a tiered partner model, with Silver, Gold and Platinum tiers. The tiers are broken down by revenue and training requirements, rewarding those partners who do invest more in Unitrends.

Ryan Walsh

Cloud-focused distributor Pax8 promoted Senior Vice President of Partner Solutions Ryan Walsh to the role of chief channel officer.

The move comes as Pax8 aims to strengthen its line card relationships by establishing a team of designated vendor account managers. The "Vendor Wingman" program will feature account reps whose primary focus is keeping Pax8 aligned with the sales and marketing arms of supported cloud platform and software providers

The vendor accounts team and partner sales reps will both report to Walsh. The company has also promoted Jennifer Bodell to vice president of channel and Don Jeter to vice president of marketing, both of whom will continue reporting to Nick Heddy, sales and marketing senior vice president.

John Shlonsky

West Corp overhauled its executive team in the wake of Apollo Global Management's massive $5.2 billion acquisition of the telecom services provider, most notably naming payments industry veteran John Shlonsky as its next CEO.

Shlonsky succeeds 26-year West Corp veteran Tom Barker as CEO and Robert Wechsler replaces longtime executive Nancee Berger in the role of president as part of the sweeping leadership changes. Barker will remain on in a consultative role to assist with the executive transition, and Berger will continue to serve as COO into 2018. Both executives have said they will retire.

Shlonsky spent nearly a decade as CEO of financial services firm TransFirst, which specializes in providing merchant bank card, credit card and transaction processing services, before joining TSYS as part of its acquisition of TransFirst.

Victor Gureghian Baez

Carbon Black tapped Victor Gureghian Baez to lead the security vendor's channel operations in a bid to enhance the company's international partner and distribution footprint.

Baez spent more than five years at Microsoft, where he worked alongside Carbon Black's recently hired Chief Revenue Officer Thomas Hansen in a number of executive roles. He most recently held the position of senior director, worldwide distribution and indirect channels at the computing giant.

"There's obviously an expectation that they're going to be growing at a pretty fast pace outside of the U.S.," Baez told CRN. "A channel strategy has to be global, and you have to be able to leverage the best practices from around the world."

Amy Hawthorne

IT industry veteran Amy Hawthorne joined Houston-based backup and disaster recovery specialist iland Cloud – No. 470 on the 2017 CRN Solution Provider 500 – as its new vice president of marketing.

Hawthorne previously held roles at a number of B2B technology startups as well as managed cloud vendor Rackspace, where she served as director of marketing from 2012 to 2015. There, she gained valuable experience in channel partner enablement through attractive solutions, field sales alignment and the right marketing assets, joint programs and incentives.

Hawthorne will be a part of iland's upcoming push to partner with more managed service providers and resellers in attempts to drive more DRaaS, BaaS and IaaS solutions sales globally.

Phil Salopek

Networking security vendor Bricata selected longtime industry exec Phil Salopek as the company's next CFO.

Salopek served as CFO of document software firm Notable Solutions from 2009 to 2014, when he led the company "through a period of controlled but significant growth," according to his LinkedIn profile. He was also CFO of Axent when the company was bought by Symantec for $1 billion during the 1990s.

As CFO of Broadsoft from 2003 to 2007, Salopek said company revenue grew from $2 million to $60 million while its overall employee count tripled to more than 250.

Orville Pike

Along with Phil Salopek, Orville Pike was hired as vice president of engineering at Bricata, where he'll work to continue optimizing and enhancing the company's networking security solutions.

Pike joins Bricata from KoolSpan, where he oversaw the company's secure VoIP and messaging app software development team as vice president of engineering. He has also held top engineering roles at TeleCommunication Systems and was a game developer at OpenPath Products from 2003 to 2008.

’It’s no secret that the cybersecurity community is facing a talent shortage, which affects solution providers as well as enterprises,’ Bricata CEO John Trauth said in a statement. ’Our continued ability to attract top-tier leadership talent is further validation of the company’s potential and of the dire security problem we solve for our customers.’

Tim Roddy

Fidelis Cybersecurity strengthened its executive team with the appointment of Tim Roddy as vice president of product strategy.

Roddy is a McAfee veteran who spent 12 years at the security giant, holding senior product and marketing roles in a handful of different areas, with cloud security being the most recent. He notably helped broaden the company's on-premises security solution to incorporate cloud deployment options.

With Fidelis, Roddy will work to shape its product strategy and craft marketing messaging that better position the company in the enterprise market.

Billy Cripe

Also joining Fidelis Cybersecurity is Billy Cripe as vice president of global marketing. Cripe will lead the security company's marketing teams as Fidelis looks to firmly entrench itself in the automated detection and response space.

Before joining Fidelis, Cripe was chief marketing officer at Software-as-a-Service firm Field Nation and a vice president of marketing at both Digitiliti and Fishbowl Solutions. He also held a product management role at Oracle.

Deirdre Toner

Big data firm DataStax named Deirdre Toner as its new senior vice president of worldwide sales as the company looks to continue chasing growth around its enterprise- and public sector-focused data management platform. Toner joins the company after holding senior sales roles at ClearStory Data and, before that, SAP.

DataStax has developed a data platform based on Apache Cassandra, the open-source distributed database for storing and managing huge amounts of data across multiple data centers and the cloud.

"It’s rare to find such a great combination of disruptive technology backed up by a great organization that is truly focused on customer success. It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to take these efforts to new levels," Toner said in a statement.

Alvaro Gonzalez

IT services provider TierPoint welcomed sales veteran Alvaro Gonzalez to its team as assistant vice president, channel, where he'll be responsible for driving indirect sales in the U.S. and growing the company's existing partner base.

Prior to joining TierPoint, Gonzalez worked at Peak 10, Corbus and Cincinnati Bell. He will report to Channel Vice President Kenny Ash.

"Alvaro's leadership qualities, experience and commitment to help our channel partners succeed are second to none," Ash said in a statement. "He has hit the ground running and is a tremendous asset to our team."

Scott Collins

Fast-growing cybersecurity firm Vectra hired indirect sales guru Scott Collins as director of North America channels. Collins joins Vectra after holding the Americas channel vice president role at Fidelis Cybersecurity, and was also director of Americas channel sales at FireEye.

Collins will oversee the development of Vectra's channel strategy and how it supports reseller, consulting and MSSP partners. He will also be responsible for partner recruitment, education and go-to-market enablement.

Vectra reports that it experienced 294 percent revenue growth in the third quarter of 2017, and attributed a large portion of that momentum to the success of its channel partners.

Maria Dinallo

Hybrid cloud platform developer Ormuco has its first channel chief in town, having named former Parallels exec Maria Dinallo as senior channel director.

Dinallo will preside over Ormuco's recently debuted partner program. Within that, she'll work to optimize how partners go to market around Ormuco Stack, a software platform built on OpenStack that's geared toward on-premises private cloud users.

Previously, Dinallo had spent 11 years in channel roles at Parallels, and in 2016 was recognized as a CRN Women of the Channel honoree. She'll be responsible for working with Ormuco's 20 global channel partners.

Ryan Bonnici

G2 Crowd, a crowdsourcing site that provides software reviews to solution providers, has hired HubSpot, Microsoft and Salesforce veteran Ryan Bonnici as CMO.

Bonnici previously served as senior director of global marketing at HubSpot and, before that, was director and head of marketing in Salesforce's APAC region.

G2 Crowd recently announced a $30 million Series B funding round from Accel and LinkedIn, and hosts reviews for a wide variety of software platforms, including SaaS, CRM, marketing automation, enterprise and help desk solutions.