HPE channel chief Paul Hunter is the company’s new managing director for North America, the company said on Wednesday. He replaces Dan Belanger, a senior vice president, who steps down after more than 30 years with the company.

HPE’s Paul Hunter

So now the vendor is searching for its next permanent head of worldwide channel sales.

“This is an exciting move not only for Paul but for the North America sales organization,” wrote Hewlett Packard Enterprise chief sales officer Heiko Meyer. “Paul has been instrumental in accelerating our pivot to becoming an edge-to-cloud, platform-as-a-service company. With more than 700 partners now selling HPE GreenLake, he has shown strong leadership and brought a fresh perspective to the organization. His experience in moving partners from a transactional to a more strategic business outcome model is our future. He is well prepared to drive value for our customers, partners and sales teams. I am confident in his ability to drive our business forward.”

Hunter became HPE’s worldwide partner sales leader in November 2017. At the time, he replaced Denzil Samuels, who filled the top channel slot for just nine months. In fact, shy of three years in the job, Hunter has stayed longer than HPE’s last two global channel chiefs. In addition to Samuels, Kerry Bailey left after a year and a half.

Hunter has worked closely with both Meg Whitman and Antonio Neri, former and current HPE CEOs, respectively.

The affable Hunter thanked Meyer and HPE partners on Twitter, for the progress they’ve made possible in the past three years.

“I look forward to working with the North American team, #partners and #customers, and to their good ideas and feedback for further improvement,” he tweeted.

An 18-year HPE veteran, Hunter was a Channel Partners 2019 Top Gun 51 award winner.

The news of Hunter’s new position and vacated seat coincides with news of Dell Technologies’ new global channel chief, Rola Dagher. She replaces Joyce Mullen, who left the job in July.