Dave Gwyn is taking over leadership of Nutanix’s channel organization with the pending departure of current channel chief Christian Alvarez. Nutanix revealed on Tuesday that Alvarez is leaving the hybrid cloud infrastructure provider and “will be pursuing other opportunities.”

Christian Alvarez

Alvarez led a revamping of the Nutanix Elevate partner program in 2020 and rolled out enhanced incentives just two months ago. But with revenue declining, Nutanix in August announced it would reduce 4% of its workforce, or 270 employees, before November.

Analysts said the company’s spending was excessive and the layoffs were overdue. Reports surfaced last month that Nutanix was considering putting it up for sale.

Gwyn, the new global channel chief, is a 10-year Nutanix veteran. At Nutanix, Gwyn has held several sales leadership positions, including senior VP and COO of worldwide sales. In his most recent role, he was senior VP of customer success.

Gwyn’s Nutanix History

Despite various senior leadership positions, Gwyn has yet to hold any channel executive roles. Gwyn told Channel Futures he doesn’t see that as an issue.

Nutanix’s Dave Gwyn

“Given that we go to market primarily via the channel, each of my prior roles required extensive interaction with and understanding of our channel sales and support organizations as well as our partners,” Gwyn said.

Also, Gwyn said that he worked closely with Alvarez during his tenure at Nutanix.

“While full immersion will certainly take some time, I’m confident in my ability to lead this organization as we continue our subscription transformation,” he said.

Regarding Nutanix’s subscription pricing shift, Gwyn’s most recent role centered on building the company’s customer success and renewals organizations.

“As renewals continue to grow as a percentage of our annual bookings, it’s important that our channel ecosystem is oriented accordingly,” Gwyn said. “I expect my experience in building organizations to be quite helpful in ensuring that our channel strategy evolves in a direction that’s consistent with our commitment to subscription sales and renewals.”

JS Group’s Janet Schijns

Industry analyst Janet Schijns, CEO of JS Group, said increasingly new channel leaders will come from other lines of business.

“The next generation of channel leaders will come from areas like customer success, data analytics, alliances and marketing,” Schijns said. “They will exhibit a keen sense of understanding on the culture of the channel and how to rise above their competitors by working in the partners’ environments versus trying to force the partners into their environment.”