January’s Channel People on the Move

It’s clear that many of you made a resolution to get a new job in the new year. 

We were inundated in January with announcements of telecom and IT channel professionals landing new positions and/or getting promoted to handle new responsibilities.

This edition of People on the Move includes key appointments at master agents Telarus, TBI and Avant, to name a few. Distributors such as ScanSource and Pax8 also got in the game.

As always, some of the people you see in this gallery have a day-to-day impact on the channel, while others make decisions that affect partners over the long haul. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it gives you a nice sampling of the new hires and promotions in January. You’re sure to see people you know.

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

Follow executive editor @Craig_Galbraith on Twitter.

People on the Move: TBI’s Miguel Sanchez and Joe Fizor

Master agent TBI appointed Joe Fizor (right), formerly of Insight, and Miguel Sanchez (above), formerly of First Communications, as solution engineers.

In their new roles, they will collaborate with sales teams to understand customer requirements, and provide technical and vendor-agnostic expertise to TBI’s agents and subagents. They also will work with providers on design and implementation of offerings, ensuring the end users’ needs are met.

Read more about Fizor and Sanchez here.

People on the Move: Telarus’ Karie Huzzey and Bobby Fabris

Telarus, the master agent and cloud services distributor, hired Karie Huzzey (above) to manage channel efforts for its recently acquired VXSuite products.

Huzzey, a channel development manager, is charged with helping to improve training, quoting and support. She leads a channel team dedicated to VXSuite, a line of solutions designed to measure and analyze network and VoIP quality.

Also new at Telarus is Bobby Fabris (right), a senior partner development manager in the southeastern U.S. He is tasked with recruiting new partners and helping to expand existing partners’ businesses. His previous experience includes stints at Level 3, Windstream and EarthLink.

Get the full scoop on Fabris here. For Huzzey, go here.

People on the Move: BroadSoft’s Dino DiPalma

BroadSoft hired Acme Packet’s former chief operating officer as its new chief revenue officer.

Dino Di Palma takes on the role of CRO at the Maryland-based unified communications as a service (UCaaS) provider. He leads sales for the company, including the BroadSoft Business portfolio.

Click here for more on Di Palma’s background and new responsibilities.

People on the Move: RapidScale’s Heidi Knowles

RapidScale‘s new channel manager in the Southeast is Heidi Knowles, who is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. She’s in charge of developing new partnerships, managing and leading existing partnerships in that part of the country.

Knowles’ most recent job was as an account manager at ViON Corp., an IT services company focused on the military, government and commercial businesses.

Want to learn more about Knowles? Go here.

People on the Move: IGEL Technology’s Simon Clephan and Doug Brown

Simon Clephan (above left) comes to IGEL Technologies from AppSense.

As the company’s new VP of business development and strategic alliances, Clephan will manage IGEL’s relationships with Citrix, Microsoft and other manufacturers.

Doug Brown (above right) is IGEL’s new global technology evangelist. In this role, he promotes the company’s brand to influential end users.

Read more about Brown here and Clephan here.

People on the Move: Avant’s Brendan Taylor

Avant appointed CVM Solutions’ Brendan Taylor as its first CFO to further grow profit margins and expand internationally.

Originally from London, Taylor was responsible for growing profit, and delivering “predictable and repeatable earnings” for CVM, a Chicago-based SaaS technology company. Last year, Avant expanded internationally into the United Kingdom and recorded 75 percent year-over-year growth in agent revenue.

Find our Q&A with Taylor here.

People on the Move: Rackspace’s Jeff Cotten

Rackspace named Jeff Cotten to the role of president, effective Feb. 1.

Cotten started at Rackspace eight years ago as a frontline manager of employees responsible for delivering Rackspace’s vaunted Fanatical Support to thousands of business customers. He then built and led important elements of the company’s U.S.-based enterprise and sales organizations. As president of Rackspace, Cotten will lead the company’s global sales team, its international businesses, and its fastest-growing businesses, including Fanatical Support for AWS, Rackspace Managed Security, and the company’s services for customers who run e-commerce and digital marketing solutions.

Click here for more on Cotten’s responsibilities at Rackspace.

People on the Move: Pax8’s Jennifer Bodell

Value-added cloud distributor Pax8 announced the appointment of Jennifer Bodell as director of emerging channel. In her new role, Bodell will be responsible for the company’s go-to-market strategy and company direction.

Bodell has some experience working in the channel, most recently at StorageCraft, where she held the title of channel marketing manager for years. She also held the title of inside channel account manager at StorageCraft for almost two years.

Read our Q&A with Bodell here.

People on the Move: Intermedia’s Eric Roach and Bob Neal

In conjunction with announcing a big financial investment in the channel, Intermedia, the cloud business application provider, introduced Eric Roach (above) as VP of field channel sales, Bob Neal (right) as director of distribution and strategic communities, and David Tiller (not pictured), as director of sales enablement and engineering.

Roach and Neal both spent several years working at Microsoft.

This is where to get more information on what Intermedia is doing in the channel.

People on the Move: Semarchy’s Michael Hiskey

Semarchy, the master data management firm, hired Michael Hiskey as chief marketing officer.

Hiskey’s experience includes leadership roles in the U.S., Europe and Latin America for Informix, IBM, Kognitio, MicroStrategy, and Trifacta, among others. In his most recent role, he was VP of marketing for Socure, a financial technology growth firm.

At Semarchy, Hiskey will drive all aspects of worldwide marketing, growing the team primarily in the U.S., where the company moved its headquarters in 2016.

People on the Move: Computex’s Frank Vitagliano

Computex Technology Solutions, a national IT solutions provider, snatched up IT and channel industry veteran Frank Vitagliano to serve as president and CEO, replacing retiring co-founder and CEO Jason Haffar.

Vitagliano most recently served as vice president of global distribution sales and strategy at Dell. Before that, he spent seven years at Juniper Networks, which followed a 33-year career at IBM.

Click here to learn more about why Vitagliano made the move.

People on the Move: ScanSource’s Brian Cuppett and Yvette McKenzie

ScanSource promoted Brian Cuppett to senior vice president of ScanSource KBZ. KBZ is a Cisco distributor that ScanSource acquired in 2015. Cuppett’s new position places him in charge of managing the company’s relationship with Cisco. Cuppett has worked for ScanSource since 1998.

Cuppett formerly led merchandizing for the communications business unit of ScanSource, but he is being replaced by Yvette McKenzie (right). She is now in charge of managing all of her unit’s associated vendors. McKenzie has worked for ScanSource since 2000, including leading Latin American and Mexican sales and merchandizing for the company’s POS and Barcode unit.

People on the Move: Dell Boomi’s David Tavolaro

Dell Boomi’s partner network of ISVs, global systems integrators, regional IT consultancies, OEMs and referral partners has its first channel chief. The vendor named David Tavolaro as vice president of business development.

In his new role, Tavolaro is responsible for growing Dell Boomi’s global partner channel and its go-to-market strategy. His previous title was vice president of sales at Anexinet, where he worked for more than a decade. He also held positions at Computer Sciences Corp, DataChannel, Actium and Accenture.

Dell acquired Boomi in November 2010 and it is currently part of Dell Technologies. It offers software-as-a-service (SaaS) integration to enterprises.

This is where to learn more about Tavolaro and opportunities with Dell Boomi.

People on the Move: Primary Data’s Robert Wilson

Primary Data appointed Robert Wilson, formerly with EMC and Fusion-io, as its new head of sales.

Wilson will lead the expansion of the Primary Data sales team to help customers manage data across different types of storage to support automated data life-cycle management, Scale-out NAS, virtualization, data migration and cloud integration. He also will be expanding the company’s channel program, allowing existing and new partners to help their customers get the “right data to the right storage at the right time.”

Read more about the direction Primary Data is taking with its channel program.

People on the Move: C3’s Dino Morra

Cloud Computing Concepts (C3) hired a new partner-program leader.

Dino Morra is now the company’s vice president of sales. He has worked at a variety of telecommunications companies over the past 25 years. C3’s channel directors now report to him.

Morra most recently worked at Atlantic Broadband and Host.net, leading sales efforts at both companies. He spent six years as regional sales director for Windstream and worked as a sales manager for AT&T from 1992 to 1999.

Read why Morra’s new boss tapped him as the right man for the job.

January’s Channel People on the Move

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