February’s Channel People on the Move

Some well-known faces took new jobs or got promoted in February.

The channel leader at Unify moved all the way up the chain to CEO. The former channel boss at Vonage and Cbeyond signed with RingCentral. A longtime leader at Tech Data started a new adventure with Brocade.

Those are just a few of the channel people on the move of note. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it gives you a nice sampling of the new hires and promotions in February who will have a day-to-day impact on the industry or make decisions that will have a trickle-down effect on the channel.

Cruise through our monthly gallery. You’re sure to see people you know.

Missed last month’s “people” gallery? Click here to see who was on the move in January.

Cohesity introduced its Revolution Partner Network and the appointment of EMC’s Joe Barnes as head of worldwide channel strategy. Barnes previously served as EMC’s West U.S. regional and divisional partner manager, and prior to that he worked at NetApp building its Southwest sales organization.

We asked Barnes a number of questions. Read his answers here.

CloudPassage, the cloud security provider, added Tim Colby as its new vice president of channel sales. Colby most recently led worldwide channel sales at Infoblox.

Get the full scoop on Colby and another CloudPassage hire, Dan Brigati, VP of federal sales, here.

Cloud services provider RapidScale hired Susan Eakle as vice president of national accounts for the Irvine, California-based company. She most recently worked as executive vice president of business development for Teleproviders, and she spent more than a decade at Windstream-acquired PAETEC as a channel manager.

Read more about what’s in store at RapidScale here.

Glenn Esposito, formerly Barracuda’s senior vice president of sales, signed on to run Cato Networks’ U.S. channel program. “Cato (which was founded a year ago) will be 100-percent channel focused,” Esposito told Channel Partners.

The company last month launched its Cato Cloud “network security-as-a-service” platform, aimed at protecting distributed, cloud-centric and mobile-first companies as well as those making inroads into the Internet of Things.

Click here to learn more about Esposito and future plans at Cato Networks.

Master-agent Intelisys selected former Windstream executive Robert Fish as its senior channel manager, Southeast Region. Based out of Atlanta, Fish will manage Intelisys sales partners throughout the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. He has spent the last 10 years as a channel manager for Windstream.

Read more about Fish’s future at Intelisys here.

Nintex introduced Alain Gentilhomme as its new chief technology officer. In this role, Gentilhomme will be responsible for delivering business-automation services to Nintex customers and partners. He joins Nintex from Seattle-based Parallels, where he was senior vice president of engineering and product management and led the company’s product strategy and technology directions, overseeing a team of more than 450 technical professionals based in the United States and Europe.

Learn more about Nintex and Gentilhomme here.

MetTel named Eric Harvey senior director of strategic channels. Prior to joining MetTel, he led sales, marketing and channel teams at Primus Telecommunications Group, Sprint, The Beacon Group and most recently, Fusion. In his role, Harvey will cultivate direct relationships through selling local and international services.

Learn more about Harvey in this post.

FiberLight appointed Jim Hintze, formerly BTI Systems’ vice president of North American sales and global channels, as its senior vice president of sales. Hintze is responsible for the further growth of FiberLight’s portfolio of dark fiber, wavelength and metro Ethernet offerings. His focus is on broadening relationships with data center and content providers, mobile and terrestrial carriers, cable MSOs and next-generation communications providers requiring higher-bandwidth capabilities.

Click here to learn more about Hintze.

Gage, the engagement marketing agency, hired Mark Iverson as chief revenue officer, vice president of business development. Prior to joining Gage, he was a vice president of business development for Fision Holdings Inc.’s Insurance and Financial Services Division. Gage says its work spurs consumers, customers and channel partners to take action for some of the world’s best-known brands.

RingCentral, the provider of cloud-based business communication and collaboration tools, named Zane Long its new vice president of global channel sales. Long previously served as vice president of Vonage’s Global Strategic Partner Group. Before that, he was national vice president of channel sales at Cbeyond, which was acquired by Birch in July 2014.

Long answered our questions about his move here.

Hostway, the cloud infrastructure provider, appointed David Newton, a former leader at Verizon and Terremark, as vice president of service operations. Hostway said he will be overseeing “24/7 NOC operations, product delivery and reliability, and support personnel excellence.”

Click here to learn more about Newton’s new role.

Brocade‘s new channel chief says he’s excited to build the program after in-depth conversations with the company’s partners. Pete Peterson, well known to the IT partner community from 20 years at Tech Data, recently joined Brocade as vice president of channel sales and marketing.

Read Channel Partners’ Q&A with Peterson here.

The acquirer of unified-communications provider Unify picked a new CEO for the company. It’s Jon Pritchard, who was serving as executive vice president of channels. France-based Atos Global said it was buying Unify – formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications – for $371 million last November. It completed the acquisition in January. Pritchard joined Unify in 2014. Unify’s top brass say he increased the company’s focus on the channel during his tenure leading its partner program.

Here is where to learn more about Pritchard’s promotion.

ANPI brought in Aldo Ramirez as a vice president of UCaaS sales. His primary role will be to execute ANPI’s sales strategies for the private-label and agent UCaaS channels. Ramirez has 18 years’ experience in the telecommunications industry working with LECs and resellers. His last 12 years were at XO Communications.

ViaSat named Eric Stark national sales manager for Business Solutions. In this role, he is responsible for driving the nationwide revenue growth of Exede Business high-speed satellite Internet service. Stark is a telecom industry veteran who spent most of the past decade in Washington D.C., first as a senior policy advisor in the Bush Administration, followed by several years growing first revenues for a number of technology startups.

Dale Tucker is the new senior director of network service provider (NSP) partners at Equinix. He’ll focus on deepening relationships with NSPs that are reselling data-center infrastructure in Equinix’s IBXs, and on driving adoption of the Equinix Cloud Exchange. Tucker previously was head of business development for the CenturyLink Channel Alliance.

Click here to read more about Tucker’s new job.