A well-known executive in charge of ShoreTel's burgeoning cloud UC effort has left the company for an SVP-level position at hosted contact center and communications rival Fonality.

Fonality on Wednesday named Jeff Valentine its new senior vice president of corporate development, reporting to CEO David Scult. His purview will include evaluating new market initiatives and driving Fonality partnerships with distributors and allies in the CRM, SaaS and telecommunications spaces.

Said Scult: "Jeff's unique experience and background in telecommunications, product development and building strategic partnerships will accelerate Fonality's growth."

[Related: New Fonality CEO Turns Focus Back On UC Channel]

Valentine was most recently product vice president in ShoreTel's Cloud Division, a role he gained following ShoreTel's $146 million acquisition of hosted VoIP provider M5 Networks earlier this year. At M5, Valentine had been senior vice president of product marketing, and before that, he'd been president and CEO of contact center software maker Callfinity, which M5 acquired in 2011.

"While other providers continue to move up-market and are distracted by enterprise customization requirements and channel conflict, Fonality focuses on market-driven requirements in our sweet spot and builds long-lasting partner relationships based on trust. I love the culture at Fonality -- I’m excited to join a team that drives more action than conversation," Valentine said in a statement.

Eight-year-old Fonality is an open-source VoIP and UC specialist that in the past year has changed CEOs and also mounted a substantial revamp of its channel partner program. Its Partner Plus Program, unveiled in 2011, includes a tiered compensation structure for partners, residual revenue for telecom agents and support for both hosted and hybrid-hosted Fonality offerings.

Scult, who joined Fonality in January, came from Microsoft, where he'd been general manager of the Office 365 unit.

"It's not often you find a venture-backed company of this size, about 250 folks, that's more than six years old and is in pretty good shape," Scult told CRN in April. "At that stage, the company is usually either looking to do a reboot, and that's why they bring in a CEO, or the founder kind of took it as far as he or she could and the board says, 'you need adult supervision.' This is unique because we're on a growth path and we don't need to shake much up."

PUBLISHED OCT. 10, 2012