Cloud communications provider Thinking Phone Networks announced Wednesday that it hired channel veteran Rob Shelby as regional vice president of channel sales with overall responsibility fo the company’s channel sales efforts.

Shelby comes to the post after nearly four years as the director for the Global Partner Program at Masergy, a global MPLS provider. During the previous eight years he held channel roles with various carriers, including director of agent sales for PAETEC, director of agent channel for McLeodUSA, agent channel manager for XO Communications and agent channel manager and other direct sales roles with Allegiance Telecom.

Rob Shelby knows the partner community well and also brings a deep understanding of the business value and revenue potential of cloud UC services,” said Thinking Phone President Steve Kokinos in a press statement. “The demand for cloud UC services is exploding, and we are seeing broad interest from a variety of distribution partners looking to take advantage of the significant revenue opportunity that cloud services offer today.”

Thinking Phone Networks offers a sales agency program as well as a white-label reseller program, which leverages its ThinkingSuite cloud platform and back-end toolkit.