Todd Abbott, the former Avaya senior vice president who left Avaya abruptly last year, Wednesday named senior vice president of worldwide sales at IP networking infrastructure specialist Sonus Networks.
Abbott will report directly to CEO Ray Dolan, and will manage Sonus' global sales force, as well as its channel partnerships.
"I am truly excited to be here," Abbott said in a statement. "Sonus has a well-regarded customer base and has trusted relationships with its customers. It is also a company that has shown great technology innovation in the past year."
Abbott started his career with IBM, and in his 28 years in the industry has also held executive positions at Cisco Systems, Symbol and Seagate. He joined Avaya in May 2008 as senior vice president of sales and president, field operations, and was a key architect of both Avaya's channel revamp and its 2009 acquisition of Nortel Networks' former enterprise unit.
Abbott stepped down from his role at Avaya in June 2010, replaced by Joel Hackney, the former president of Nortel's enterprise group. Avaya has seen ongoing churn in its executive ranks for much of the past few years.
Dolan, Sonus' CEO, praised Abbott's partnering experience and cited his importance to Sonus' channel program.
"I am pleased to welcome Todd to lead our sales efforts at Sonus," he said in a statement. "The credibility and leadership experience Todd brings to the team should help us drive greater execution levels and increase our sales velocity. In addition, as we ramp up our channel development efforts, Todd's relationships and expertise in that area should help us to accelerate the pace of business we transact through partners."
Abbott's move was announced the same day that Westford, Mass.-based Sonus reported a loss of $12.4 million for its fiscal first quarter. Revenue was a better story, reported as $67.3 million and better than both the $62.4 million it reported in the year ago quarter and analyst estimates of $64.5 million, although lower than the $83 million it reported in the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2010.
