CloudJumper, the provider of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), workspace as a service (WaaS) and desktop as a service (DaaS) solutions, has hired Mark Foust, previously with Optimal IdM and Microsoft, as vice president of sales.

In his new role, Foust will be focused on strengthening CloudJumper’s overall sales organization in North America and beyond. His also will build on the company’s presence in the channel and expand sales with enterprises moving from on-premises IT to DaaS or WaaS for the first time.

CloudJumper’s Mack Foust

Foust tells Channel Partners CloudJumper’s success has been built on a strong channel strategy.

“We have grown into a multimillion [dollar] software company by leveraging our strategic partnerships to provide a great product backed by fantastic customer support,” he said. “CloudJumper has announced several recent hires, specifically brought on to grow our channel business. There will be additional announcements in the near future. There’s a transition needed by our partners to sell into their customers the value of the Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) platform.”

Partners should be “ecstatic” with the way CloudJumper has modeled its Azure WVD product, CloudJumper Managed Workspace Suite (CMWS), Foust said.

“CloudJumper is uniquely poised to be the partner of choice as we preserve the native Azure management plane, without redirection to other clouds that add additional layers of complexity,” he said. “CloudJumper provides a single interface for automation and orchestration of advanced WVD deployment and management tasks. Candidly, partners who want to develop value-add managed offerings on WVD have no better enablement partner than CloudJumper.”

Before joining CloudJumper, Foust was the chief product evangelist for Optimal IdM. And prior to that, he spent nearly 17 years at Microsoft in various roles covering both on-premises, hybrid and cloud technologies. Before Microsoft, he was a senior consultant for Novell.

The top item on Foust’s to-do list is making sure the CloudJumper story is told.

“We have an excellent offering, but our industry has been historically dominated by Citrix and VMware,” he said. “They are good companies, but their legacy model has captured partners/customers into a model of hosted providers. Microsoft Azure WVD is going to disrupt that model, and CloudJumper already had a mature product now. We believe we have the right software solution to offer the channel, but we need to tell our story. I am also supporting CloudJumper’s leadership’s vision and growth plans. CloudJumper is growing partnerships and seat counts. There’s a lot of work to be done preparing our sales force, our Microsoft partnership in WVD and the way we position ourselves to support our channel partners. The public general availability of WVD is right around the corner, and it will set off a firestorm of positive engagements with our channel. I am tasked with making certain that CloudJumper will be known as the strategic partner of choice.”

“Mark’s background and track record of success will be tremendous assets to our mission of bringing cloud-forward IT solutions to MSPs and enterprises globally,” said JD Helms, CloudJumper‘s president. “He will be a key player on our team as we pursue excellence in the creation and delivery of industry-leading products to market.”