By Chris

Barracuda Networks (CUDA) has appointed former Vice President of Sales Ezra Hookano as the company’s latest worldwide channel chief, according to an announcement on Wednesday.

Hookano, whose official title is vice president of Channels, was one of the original members of Barracuda’s C-Suite when the company was founded in 2004. He left the company in 2010 to serve as vice president of Worldwide Sales for Drobo’s Business Products division. His other notable leadership roles include a stint as channel chief at Fusion0-io and as vice president of Sales at Exablox.

“Coming back to Barracuda and to work with the channel community that I helped develop is truly special,” said Hookano, in a statement. “We’re in a new era of challenges, where customers are looking to solution providers to not only protect their organizations but also to further empower them with cloud and virtualization technologies that make business better.”

Barracuda also announced the appointment of Hatem Naguib as senior vice president and general manager of its Security Business, responsible for the company’s global security product strategy. Prior to his appointment, Naguib served as vice president of Networking and Security at VMware.

“Both Hatem and Ezra bring the right mix of leadership and experience to accelerate growth, drive innovation in our portfolio, and continue building out our world-class channel organization – all to better meet the diverse needs of our customers and partners,” said BJ Jenkins, president and CEO, Barracuda.

Barracuda is one of several companies to name a new channel chief this week, following the appointment of Ken Bast as channel lead at Westcon-Comstor and Grant Asplund’s new role as the head of channel strategy at CENTRI.