CA Appoints Channel Chief

The Islandia-based company tapped as senior vice president of worldwide channel operations George Kafkarkou, who formerly was general manager for indirect sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The move followed the departure of Mark Milford, senior vice president and general manager of North American channels.

Milford, whose duties are included in Kafkarkou's role, spearheaded the April launch of CA's channel-preferred sales model. That strategy has drawn kudos from solution providers for compensating CA's direct-sales force more for storage sales that go through channel partners.

"Based on what I've seen, they've done everything they needed to do to keep us interested while the business has developed substance. Now we're getting substance," said Todd Huntley, president of Sanserve, a storage solution provider in Roseville, Minn.

Other partners, however, said CA's channel focus was weighted too heavily toward storage under Milford, who previously led the storage business at CA and before that at Hewlett-Packard.

"They were very engaged with the channel in the storage business, but they have not been able to make the same connection in other areas," said David Hall, CTO and senior vice president of CompuCom, a Dallas-based solution provider.

Kafkarkou's experience delivering storage, security and data modeling through the channel-preferred model overseas should benefit North American partners, solution providers said.

"He understands both storage and security and really understands how to make the direct-sales force work with the channel, so I'm expecting great things," said Michelle Drolet, CEO of Conqwest, a security solution provider based in Holliston, Mass.

Solution providers said CA's upheaval of channel leadership does not indicate weakness in the company's commitment to partners.

"They've put a senior guy in charge of it, so I don't think CA is de-emphasizing the channel at all," said Steve Pazol, president of Professional Consulting Services, a solution provider in Chicago.

Kafkarkou said he will focus on moving CA's ETrust security and AllFusion Erwin data-modeling lines to the channel-preferred sales model, but he has not yet established deadlines for the shift.

Milford and another channel executive who also left CA, Joe Pirozzi, could not be reached for comment.