25 Notable IT Executive Moves: May 2011

IT Executives On The Move

May had its fair share of executive shakeups, C-suite changes and familiar faces turning up in unfamiliar faces. Just as in the run of IT executive moves that happened in April, the month was action-packed. Here's a roundup of 25 notable IT executive moves.

Marius Haas

Marius Haas headed HP Networking for nearly three years, but before that, spent five years as chief strategy officer and global head of corporate M&A for HP. No stranger to the investment community, it was probably that history that brought Haas to private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., which announced Haas as an industry advisor in late May. Bethany Mayer, currently vice president of worldwide marketing and alliances for HP's Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking (ESSN) unit, is acting head of HP Networking while the computing giant seeks a new leader.

Gary Budzinski

Haas wasn't the only high-profile departure from HP this month. Another was Gary Budzinski, head of HP Technology Services, whose group has been moved under ESSN, headed by David Donatelli. As for Budzinski, HP confirmed he's leaving the company to "pursue other opportunities."

Tom Iannotti

Unlike Haas and Budzinski, longtime HP veteran Tom Iannotti, who heads HP's Enterprise Services unit, is retiring. According to HP, Iannotti is sticking around for the time being to ensure a smooth transition, while Ann Livermore, HP's executive vice president for enterprise business, is leading Enterprise Services on an interim basis.

Sean Maloney

Talk about a bounce-back: Intel's Sean Maloney, who more than a year ago suffered a stroke and went on medical leave, was in late May named to run Intel's growing business in China.

Maloney was previously executive vice president and general manager of Intel's Architecture Group, is the new chairman of Intel China, four months after his full-time return to chipmaker.

David Yen

Most of the executive moves related to Cisco in recent months have been departures, but in mid-May, Cisco grabbed a big win from rival Juniper: the defection of David Yen, who joined Cisco as senior vice president, server access and virtualization technology group. Yen had joined Juniper in 2008 and was most recently executive vice president and general manager of Juniper's Fabric and Switching Group, but he was better known for the two decades he spent at Sun Microsystems. In his new role at Cisco, Yen will be in charge of Cisco's all-important Unified Computing System (UCS) and Nexus switching products.

Steve Hale

There are channel veterans and there are channel veterans, and the well-traveled Steve Hale is definitely one of the latter. Hale was named vice president of global sales channels at Sophos in mid-May, a move that follows various channel executive stints at Novell and F5 Networks and a long stretch as general manager, U.S. Enterprise Partner Group at Microsoft.

Bob Godgart

It's all about keeping things moving, and that's what it appears Bob Godgart, the founder of Autotask, has done. Godgart in December confirmed he would step down as CEO, a role that went to Mark Cattini, and remain with Autotask in the newly created position of chief visionary officer. Godgart has since dropped the chief visionary officer moniker, but is going to remain on Autotask's board.

Tony Bates

Tony Bates was named the new CEO of Skype in October, and at the time, was one of the most visible departures in a string of recent exits from Cisco. Now, it appears Bates will go from working for one of the industry's most iconic CEOs -- Cisco's John Chambers -- to another of the industry's: Microsoft's Steve Ballmer. Microsoft announced in mid-May it would acquire Skype for $8.5 billion, and while the deal is far from completed, the plan is for Bates to become president of Microsoft's Skype Division when all the ink is dry.

Lane Bess

No sooner did Lane Bess hit his stride as the CEO of Palo Alto Networks than Bess and Palo Alto's board decided to part ways. That was in December. As Bess told CRN, he took some time off, looked around, did some consulting, and in early May, Bess was named chief operating officer of Zscaler, the fast-rising SaaS security vendor. Bess, who became a well-known channel and network security presence during his years at Trend Micro, has promised to bring channel religion to Zscaler and help build it into the next network security darling in Silicon Valley.

Wendy Petty

Wendy Petty was the longtime channel chief and sales vice president at FalconStor, and then departed the company in the midst of a management shuffle late last year. Petty has since resurfaced at CA Technologies, taking the role of senior advisor, business development for CA's cloud customer solution unit. As CA confirmed to CRN, Petty will be focused on business development for AppLogic, the cloud computing platform CA gained through its 2010 acquisition of 3Tera. She'll be emphasizing managed service providers that target midmarket accounts and solution providers that want to resells CA's cloud services.

Steven Joe

IT executives may come and go, but many of them never lay low for very long. That was the case with Steven Joe, the former president and CEO of D-Link, who in early May was named executive vice president of channel business, Americas, at fast-rising SMB networking vendor ZyXEL Communications. Joe wasn't underground following his 2009 departure from D-Link -- he was most recently vice president and general manager of international and strategic business at Vizio -- but when you spend 22 years at a company and become its president and CEO, it's likely that's the association for which you'll be remembered. According to Joe, ZyXEL has about 800 partners in the U.S. at present, and in his current role, he'll be responsible for brand building and all channel activity for both solution providers and ZyXEL's retail, e-commerce and product management channels, too.

Todd Abbott

Avaya's ongoing executive makeover has had some pretty notable casualties, among them Todd Abbott, the former senior vice president and president, field operations, who abruptly left Avaya in June 2010. Industry observers didn't expect Abbott -- who led Avaya's acquisition of Nortel's former enterprise unit in late 2009 -- to stay out of the game too long, and so he hasn't: Abbott was recently named senior vice president of worldwide sales at Sonus Networks, the IP networking infrastructure specialist.

Manuel Medina

As often happens during an acquisition, the management of the company being acquired moves on, and that's happening with Terremark Worldwide. Terremark CEO and founder Manuel Medina stepped down from his post effective May 31, following Terremark's $1.4 billion acquisition by Verizon Communications earlier this spring. Medina, who spent 30 years with Terremark, founded it as a real estate firm in 1980, and in 2000, transformed it into a services business, ultimately growing it to be a leader in cloud computing providers for large enterprises and governments. Kerry Bailey, group president of Verizon Enterprise Cloud Strategy and Services, will take on the top role at Terremark following Medina's exit.

K.V. Kamath And S.D. Shibulal

Just before the beginning of the month, Indian technology giant Infosys Technologies announced K.V. Kamath as its new board chairman, and S.D Shibulal as its new CEO. Kamath is the former top executive at ICICI Bank Ltd., and will be the first co-founder to head Infosys' board. He replaced N.R. Narayana Murthy, who is planning to retire on Aug. 20. Shibulal is currently chief operating officer, and will succeed S. Gopalakrishnan to become Infosys' CEO.

Rob Crawford

Among the latest changes at network infrastructure supplier QLogic was the mid-May appointment of Rob Crawford to the role of senior vice president, worldwide sales. Crawford, a 20-year industry veteran, was previously vice president of worldwide OEM, channel and inside sales at Quantum, and also held positions at ADIC, Dell and Compaq.

Kevin Wagner

OCZ Technology Group, which makes high-performance solid state drives and power supplies, has a new vice president in Kevin Wagner, who in late May was announced as vice president, product management for enterprise solutions. Wagner is a veteran of the components segment, having served 12 years as director of alliances at AMD among his previous assignments.

Ram Appalaraju

Enterasys has been on an executive hiring tear as it looks to pump up its position in the channel and drive profitability for partners behind its Enterasys 2011 Advantage Partner Program. Among the marquee hires -- technically announced in late April -- was Ram Appalaraju, who became Enterasys' vice president of marketing following 18 months as senior vice president of marketing for Meru Networks.

Joe Burton

A well-known name in the unified communications and video markets, Joseph Burton was named CTO and senior vice president, engineering and development at Plantronics in late May. Burton was most recently executive vice president and CTO at Polycom -- a role he was named to only eight months earlier -- and before that spent 10 years at Cisco, most recently as CTO for unified communications.

Ken Fabozzi

Specialty distributor Jenne, which specializes in IP telephony, audio and video conferencing, data networking and IT security, brought on a channel veteran in Ken Fabozzi, to a newly created position of vice president, U.S. sales. Fabozzi reports to Dean Jenne, executive vice president, sales and marketing, and will be responsible for building Jenne's regional and inside sales teams across the U.S. Most recently director of sales for Ingram Micro's Advanced Computing Division, Fabozzi had been at Ingram since 1994.

Polycom Changes

Several big appointments at Polycom lately, among them Hansjoerg Wagner, now the company's senior vice president of global field operations, and Kate Huchison, its new chief marketing officer and executive vice president. Wagner was most recently Polycom's Asia Pacific president -- a role he'll keep -- while Hutchison is new to Polycom following stints at VMware, Citrix and BEA. Polycom's previous CMO, Heidi Melin, was in mid-May named executive vice president and CMO at Taleo Corp.

Juliann Larimer

Juliann Larimer recently joined Motorola Solutions as MSSI Vice President Global Channel Strategy, Programs and Governance where she is responsible for the global channel strategy as well as implementation and governance of the PartnerEmpower program. Juliann came to Motorola from NCR, where she was VP, North America Channel.

Zane Long

Zane Long, well known in the carrier and telecom service provider channel, is once again on the move: Cbeyond said in mid-May it had hired Long to be vice president, indirect sales channel. Long was most recently channel chief at Genband, and before Genband held channel executive roles at Airband, Level 3 and Focal Communications. Long replaces Brad Linden, who left Cbeyond earlier this spring.

FalconStor VPs

FalconStor's executive makeover continues. At the end of the month, FalconStor named Donna Williams as vice president of worldwide technical support and Abbas Meghjee as vice president of North American sales operations. Williams is a veteran of HP, where she directed software support delivery, while Abbas was most recently director of sales for inside sales organizations covering the United Kingdom and emerging markets for Symantec.

David Blankenhorn

Fast growing government solution provider and VAR 500 staple DLT Solutions, which recently expanded into communications and IP networking with the addition of XO to its line card, added David Blankenhorn to its senior management team earlier in the month. Blankenhorn, an IT veteran of more than 20 years of experience who spent a decade with Sun Microsystems, is going to run DLT's newly established Cloud Advisory Group, which DLT is describing as a "knowledge practice designed to provide government customers with architectural and technical direction in the selection of cloud products and services."

Blue Coat Changes

Shortly before Blue Coat announced new cloud WAN optimization products, it also confirmed several changes to its executive team and its management structure. Blue Coat, going forward, will be structured as three product groups: web security, WAN optimization and cloud services. Brian NeSmith, chief product officer and formerly Blue Coat's president and CEO until August 2010, is leaving the company, as is Dave De Simone, senior vice president of products and technology. Both will stay through the end of June to facilitate the transition, according to Blue Coat.

Check out more IT executive moves from April.