Garrett Jones, Symantec’s (SYMC) former Global Channel Operations vice president, has jumped ship to head sales for Spanning, an Austin, Texas-based cloud backup and data recovery provider.

Jones, who had been with Symantec for eight years, helped craft many of the security provider’s channel initiatives. In published remarks, he said he’s had “a great career” at Symantec and “wish them nothing but the best.” He reportedly left Symantec to be with his family in Austin and to work at a smaller company.

Most recently, Jones presided over an added competency component Symantec attached to its reworked channel partner program, providing a path and rewarding partners for building the capabilities required to sell and implement its security solutions.

Jones’ official title at Spanning is Sales vice president, tasked with building out and developing the company’s channel development on multiple fronts, with a particular emphasis on mining international business through partners. Some 40 percent of Spanning’s business currently comes from non-U.S. businesses. Jones’ 20-year background extends to sales stints with Dell in Ireland and Asia-Pacific.

Jeff Erramouspe, Spanning president and chief executive, said Jones’ appointment is well-timed as the company attempts to expand its network of Google (GOOG) Apps resellers and Salesforce.com consultants.

“We are instituting a number of initiatives focused on strengthening our relationships abroad to support both current customers and the growing number of organizations interested in using Spanning Backup to protect their cloud application data,” he said.

“Garrett joining Spanning is a tremendous win for us as he possesses the ideal blend of international experience and strategic thinking we need in order to capitalize on the explosion of interest we are seeing abroad. We are eager to see Garrett in action and are confident his invaluable expertise in channel operations will have an immediate impact on our company and culture,” said Erramouspe.

Jones said he is “looking forward to meeting with our current partners and customers and helping to lead the next phase of Spanning’s international expansion.”