Adtran Execs Defect To Digium, Plan Channel Push

Danny Windham, former president, COO and director of networking vendor Adtran, is joining Digium as its chief executive. Huntsville, Ala.-based Digium is the creator and primary developer of the Asterisk open-source VoIP platform.

Steven Harvey, former vice president of enterprise networks and competitive service provider sales at Adtran, has been named vice president of worldwide sales at Digium.

With the executive additions, Digium Founder and President Mark Spencer is taking on the newly created position of chairman and CTO.

Windham, who has been a member of the Digium board for the last seven years, will be responsible for Digium's corporate strategy and day-to-day operations. A 16-year Adtran veteran, he served as president and COO since September 2005. He was named to Adtran's board a year ago, a seat he is now vacating.

Harvey will drive Digium's channel strategy and business development activities. He has overseen Adtran's channel partner program for nine of his 11 years at the company, ushering in recent updates to the vendor's Advantage Partner Program, including the launch of a deal registration program, the rollout of a new partner relationship management system and a more than $1 million investment to build a channel telesales group.

Harvey said he and Windham are moving to Digium as part of a plan to build a multitiered channel, much as they did together at Adtran. Harvey said he plans on working with the channel team at Digium to craft the company's channel program. When they began working together at Adtran, the company was primarily a direct-sales culture within the enterprise business, which the duo moved to a 95 percent channel sales model with $125 million in enterprise sales for 2006.

With the planned release this quarter of a new Asterisk hardware appliance for small businesses, Digium is poised to appeal to a group of VARs that might not have shown interest in Asterisk historically because of the difficulty in configuring and supporting the product.

"We're simplifying the product into one discreet unit, helping VARs cross the chasm of voice/data convergence," Harvey said. "This helps them simplify their convergence challenges."

Adtran and Digium already have strong ties. In addition to Windham's seat on Digium's board, Adtran holds an equity interest in Digium, and Spencer formerly worked as a co-op student at Adtran, also based in Huntsville.

Harvey is being replaced at Adtran by Ted Cole, who has been named vice president of channel sales. Adtran will not be replacing Windham, according to a company spokesperson.