Westcon Names New Marketing VP

Potter previously was vice president of marketing at Extreme Networks and also has worked at Cisco Systems and 3Com, according to Westcon Group.

The position is a newly created one at Westcon Group, a Tarrytown, N.Y.-based distributor. Westcon Group plans to file an initial public offering later this year and Potter is charged with unifying the company's marketing messages.

"With where Westcon is and where it hopes to be in the future, it's important to unify the marketing activities, to be very consistent and also have the opportunity to learn and cross-fertilize opportunities across the spread of activity worldwide. Tom [Dolan, Westcon Group CEO] felt this was something of a real opportunity to drive best practices on a global basis," Potter said.

Potter plans to split his time working with vendors and solution provider customers. He was responsible for channel marketing at Extreme, he said.

"You have to understand what vendors are looking for [in order] to best provide them with the scalability and value-add that the channel can offer. On the other hand, you have to understand how to take that core offering of a vendor or a series of vendors [and put it] together for our customers to deliver to end users," Potter said.