**Editor’s Note: Click here to see which channel people were on the move in December.**

Avaya has launched a new organization focused on driving cloud products and services for the company, and has appointed Mercer Rowe, formerly with IBM, to lead it.

As senior vice president and general manager of Avaya Cloud, Rowe’s responsibilities will span public, private and hybrid cloud offers, including cloud R&D, application development and services, as well as sales for the newly organized business unit.

Avaya’s Mercer Rowe

“Avaya is a global leader in contact center (CC) and unified communications and collaboration (UC) software solutions with over 130,000 customers worldwide and an installed base of over 100 million users,” Rowe said. “The transformation of UC and CC to cloud delivery is still in the early innings and the growth opportunity for Avaya is one of the biggest cloud opportunities in the market today. I’m excited to join the new executive team at Avaya to capture the growth being driven by cloud, digital transformation, mobility, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and the Internet of Things (IoT).”

Last month, Avaya emerged from chapter 11 bankruptcy as a public company with about $350 million in cash and a little less than half the debt it had when it filed last January.

As vice president of strategic partners for IBM’s cloud and Watson platforms, Rowe led global cloud and artificial intelligence initiatives. Before joining IBM, he founded and served as CEO of VMware vCloud Service, a joint venture with SoftBank to deliver cloud services in Japan. He also incubated VMware’s own cloud service business, and spent a decade with cloud-powered startups, building sales, channel and services organizations.

“Mercer brings a wealth of knowledge that will help us expand our business in the cloud, which is critical to our growth,” said Jim Chirico, Avaya’s president and CEO. “By creating a business solely focused on cloud products and services, and with Mercer’s leadership, we will accelerate the delivery of cloud solutions that meet the growing needs of our customers and partners.”

In November, Avaya unveiled a tighter focus on helping its Edge partners offer UC and contact-center applications as a cloud-based service (UCaaS, CCaaS) to business customers.

Avaya was just recognized in the industry’s first Channel Influencer Awards, which honor the people, technologies, trends and organizations that will shape the new channel in 2018.