New Enterasys CEO: We're On The Comeback Trail

At least, that’s the message he plans to bring to partners, customers and employees in coming months.

At the crux of the company’s revival will be a strong sales and marketing push, undertaken hand-in-hand with Enterasys solution providers, Fabiaschi said in his first interview with CRN since joining the Andover, Mass.-based company at the end of April.

“I’m trying to get the company to acknowledge and understand that ‘sales’ is a process, not a department,” Fabiaschi said. “The partner is now an extension of our company.”

Fabiaschi pledged to take a personal role in helping partners grow Enterasys sales. Over a 12-month span starting in August, he plans to attend approximately 75 partner events, to which solution providers will bring in their customers to learn about Enterasys’ networking and security product road map.

“I’m going to be out in the field with them slugging it out,” Fabiaschi said. “Now it’s just words from me, but in the next three months, six months, nine months, they will see us deliver.”

Enterasys has struggled to gain visibility as it grappled with drooping financial results, layoffs and executive turnover. Throughout, the company maintained the high quality of its technology, which several solution providers said has kept them and their customers loyal.

“They do have the technology. They have always had better products, and the people who have their products are very loyal to them, which makes us loyal to them,” said Mike Bramm, CTO of CompuNet International, a partner in Brooklyn Park, Minn.

It’s the marketing savvy that’s been lacking, partners said. Going forward, Enterasys needs to improve communications and include partners in its marketing efforts, said Jake Mitchell, COO of InnovationsTech, Pittsburgh. In the past, for example, partners have not been given advance notice of the vendor’s national marketing campaigns, losing the opportunity to piggyback with their own local marketing efforts, he said.

Toward that end, Enterasys is embarking on new lead- generation programs and in a few weeks is launching a deal-registration portal, said Jim Harold, vice president of worldwide channels. Funding has freed up since Enterasys was acquired by The Gores Group and Tennenbaum Capital Partners in March and taken private, he said.