Dewpoint CEO Leaves Company

Rob Mock, president and CEO of Dewpoint, one of Sun Microsystems' top partners, has left the company.

Mock told CRN that he stepped down from his position at the Brighton, Mich.-based solution provider Thursday as part of a management buyout. Andy Kotarba, Dewpoint's CFO, has added the title of president, but the company didn't disclose its plans for the CEO slot. Kotarba couldn't be reached for comment on Friday.

Mock said he's now mulling his next move. "I'm exploring a lot of options," he said.

Jokingly describing himself as a "battle-scarred veteran" of the VAR community, Mock founded Integration Projects in 1996, which merged with Dewpoint in 2001. At the time of the merger, Mock became president and CEO of Dewpoint, which was launched in 1994 as a storage and hardware reseller. In 2002, Dewpoint bought Chicago-based software and services firm Centrifusion to help expand its Java software and application development strategy.

At the height of its business in the spring of 2002, Dewpoint had 115 employees and seven offices in the Midwest. The solution provider currently has about 40 employees in four Midwest offices.

Mock was a familiar figure at Sun's partner conferences and an outspoken member of its National VAR Council, as well as co-chairman of the vendor's Sun ONE Partner Council. Dewpoint won Sun's Best in Show award at the 2002 iForce Partner Summit.

Like many Sun VARs, Dewpoint took its share of punches after the dot-com bust. But some of the company's peers recently told CRN that under Mock's leadership, Dewpoint was well-positioned to take advantage of the economic recovery because it diversified its business into application development sooner than some of Sun's other solution providers.

Tom Kuni, president of SSI/Hub City, Metuchen, N.J., said Sun needs solution providers like Dewpoint as the vendor struggles to rid customers of the perception that it's a hardware vendor that aims to derive more of its revenue from software and solutions. "VARs like Dewpoint can do it all," Kuni said.

Doug Nassaur, president of Alpharetta, Ga.-based solution provider True North Technology, agreed. "If I'm competing against VARs like Dewpoint, the whole industry gets better," he said.

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