William Madison is returning to Masergy to give its channel partner program a boost.

Madison, a long-time member of the software-defined networking company, left it earlier this year to work at Avaya. He has since returned to Masergy to serve as vice president of alliances, distributors and international markets. Madison will specialize in bringing partners into the new Masergy partner program. He’ll also work to expand “new channel sales routes for Masergy on a global scale,” the company said.

Masergy’s Bill Madison

The company unveiled the Zenith Partner Program late last month. The program targets agents, master agents and technology partners, and increases training and marketing resources.

Madison joined Avaya in January to lead the vendor’s North American cloud channel sales. He played a key role in launching the new Avaya Cloud Office solution, Masergy said.

Masergy recently changed its portfolio to improve SD-WAN performance and meet Gartner’s Secure Access Service Edge (requirements). Madison praised the vendor’s market opportunity.

“Work from home, mobile access, cloud connectivity and so much more has stretched the enterprise network,” he said. “This is a perfect climate for Masergy and our partner community to sell more and to deliver desired outcomes to our end users.”

Madison worked as vice president of Masergy’s global channel development program before he joined Avaya.

Changing Faces

The company recently said goodbye to Chris Werpy, its senior vice president of solutions and services. In addition, Masergy’s global director of Cisco Strategic Alliance left to take on channel chief duties at OneStream Networks.

Jim Glackin joined the company in the summer to become channel chief. He vowed a heftier, more proactive investment into the channel.

“I see most channel programs as reactive, ready and willing to jump in on opportunities, but not actively working to help partners generate new opportunities. This approach doesn’t work,” Glackin said in July.

Masergy and IDG Research recently unveiled an SD-WAN trends report. We wrote about their findings in our latest SD-WAN roundup.