30 Notable IT Executive Moves: January 2014

Start It Off

The year 2014 got started off with a bang in the executive moves department. New faces at IBM, a corporate reorganization at Lenovo, and big channel chief departures at Oracle, EMC and Huawei highlighted a busy month for the IT industry.

Marc Dupaquier

It's a new year, and IBM has a new global channel chief. Marc Dupaquier was named general manager of IBM Global Business Partners last month, replacing General Manager Mark Hennessy, who was moved to a new role at IBM that has yet to be announced. Dupaquier, an IBM veteran who has spent nearly 30 years with the company, most recently served as vice president of marketing and strategy at IBM's Systems and Technology Group. He was also general manager of IBM's global midmarket business and head of marketing for IBM Software Group.

Tami Duncan

IBM also named a new North American channel chief. Tami Duncan was appointed as vice president of IBM's business partner and midmarket sales for North America, taking over for Bill Donohue, who retired from IBM last summer after more than 30 years with the company. Duncan has spent more than a decade with Big Blue and recently served as vice president of IBM's Northeast Region general business. She also worked as director of strategy for IBM Global Services North America. Prior to IBM, she served as vice president of integration at MSI.

David Goulden

EMC promoted David Goulden to the new role of CEO of EMC Information Infrastructure, which includes the company's core enterprise storage business. Goulden, who is widely viewed as a top candidate to succeed CEO Joe Tucci when he retires next year, has spent more than a decade with EMC. He most recently served as president and COO of EMC's Information Infrastructure and also spent seven years as CFO of EMC. Before joining EMC in 2002, Goulden served as president and COO of IT services firm Getronics.

Mitch Breen

Mitch Breen's short stay at Oracle came to an end last month. Breen, who just eight months ago joined Oracle as senior vice president of North American sales, departed the enterprise software maker to become senior vice president of global sales at SimpliVity, a converged infrastructure developer. Before joining Oracle, Breen worked at EMC for two decades in various channel and sales capacities, including vice president of Americas sales. He also served as a board member for VCE.

Leonard Iventosch

EMC's North American channel chief unexpectedly resigned from the storage leader last month. Leonard Iventosch, who served as vice president of Americas channels for two years, now lists himself as a "restricted free agent" on his LinkedIn profile. Before joining EMC, he was vice president of worldwide channels at Isilon Systems, which was acquired by EMC in 2010. Prior to Isilon, Iventosch worked at NetApp for nearly 10 years and served as vice president of channels, among other roles.

Rob Claus

Huawei is looking for a new U.S. channel chief after Rob Claus left the Chinese networking company last month. Claus, who has served as vice president of U.S. channel sales and marketing for Huawei's Enterprise Business Group since 2011, was named vice president of sales at Tely Labs. Claus is best known for his eight-year tenure at Polycom, where he served as vice president of distribution and channel sales. After Polycom, he held channel and distribution roles at ShoreTel and Hewlett-Packard before joining Huawei.

Chris Wolf

VMware has a new chief technology officer. Chris Wolf, a research vice president at Gartner for the past four years, has joined the virtualization leader as CTO of the Americas, where he'll lead VMware's product development around cloud and mobile computing. Before Gartner, Wolf served as a senior analyst at the Burton Group for three years. Prior to becoming a technology analyst, he was principal consultant and founder of Chris Wolf Consulting Services, which focused on virtualization, and backup and recovery technologies.

Jason Chen

After a tumultuous end to 2013 with big executive departures, Acer finally has a new full-time CEO. The computer maker named Jason Chen as president and CEO. Chen officially took over Acer on Jan. 1. He most recently served as senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Acer founder Stan Shih, who last December returned to the company as chairman and interim CEO, will continue on as chairman. Chen first joined TSMC in 2005. Prior to that, he spent 14 years at Intel and served many roles, including corporate vice president of Intel's Sales and Marketing Group.

Jonathan Belcher

After a flurry of channel executive departures last year, Juniper Networks finally has a new U.S. channel chief. The company named Jonathan Belcher as its new vice president of Americas partner sales. Belcher joined Juniper in 2010 and most recently served as vice president of partner and alliance sales for the company's Asia Pacific, Greater China, and Japan region. Prior to Juniper, he served as vice president of worldwide sales at both Augmentix and Neterion. Belcher was also vice president of worldwide OEM sales at Quantum.

Gianfranco Lanci

Lenovo reorganized its corporate structure last month into four main groups and made several executives changes, starting with the promotion of Gianfranco Lanci as head of Lenovo's new PC Business Group. Lanci, who joined Lenovo in 2012, previously served as COO and executive vice president of Lenovo's Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) business. Prior to joining Lenovo, Lanci spent many years at Acer and was appointed as president in 2005 and later promoted to CEO in 2008. Before Acer, he held management positions at Texas Instruments.

Liu Jun

Lenovo also named 20-year veteran Liu Jun as head of its newly formed Mobile Business Group, which includes the company's smartphone, tablet and smart TV businesses. Jun most recently served as executive vice president, mobile. Since joining Lenovo in 1993, he also served as president of Lenovo's Business Group, president of the Products Group, and as senior vice president and chief operating officer of Lenovo China.

Gerry Smith

The corporate reorganization at Lenovo also added new responsibilities to Gerry Smith, who was named as head of Lenovo's Enterprise Group, which includes the company's server and storage divisions. Smith, who previously served as executive vice president of the Americas at Lenovo, will keep those duties in addition to his enterprise role. Smith joined Lenovo in 2006 and also served as the company's senior vice president of global supply chain. Before that, he served as vice president and general manager of notebook development at Dell.

George He

Lastly, Lenovo's new Ecosystem and Cloud Services Group will be led by George He, who will focus on the computer maker's cloud strategy and expanded product ecosystem in China and beyond. He most recently served as senior vice president and chief technology officer. As part of the management shakeup, Peter Hortensius, formerly senior vice president of Lenovo's Think Product Group, replaced He as CTO.

Sheila Jordan

Symantec has appointed former Cisco executive Sheila Jordan to the role of CIO, replacing Marty Hodgett, who recently left the company. Jordan spent nearly 10 years with Cisco, most recently serving as senior vice president of IT, communication and collaboration. Prior to joining Cisco in 2005, she worked at the Walt Disney Company as senior vice president of Destination Disney. Jordan also is a board member of NextSpace and sits on the CIO Advisory Board of SnapLogic.

Roger Egan

In yet another channel executive departure, Red Hat's Roger Egan has left the company to take a new position at Docker, an open-source startup. Egan, who most recently served as vice president of North American channel sales, stepped down less than two weeks before the Red Hat partner conference last month. He joined the software company seven years ago as senior director of North American channels and business development. Before that, he spent more than 15 years at IBM in a range of management and sales roles.

Kit Colbert

As part of the software company's push into mobile and client devices, VMware named several new executive appoints for its End-User Computing business. VMware veteran Kit Colbert was named as chief technology officer of End-User Computing. Colbert joined VMware in 2003 and has worked as a principal engineer for the company. During that time, he served as chief architect of VMware's Horizon Workspace and VMware's vCenter Operations Management Suite, as well as technical lead and creator of VMware vSphere Storage vMotion.

Bob Schultz

VMware added Citrix veteran Bob Schultz to its executive team as chief strategy lead for end-user computing. Schultz previously served as group vice president and general manager of desktop and applications for Citrix, joining the company in 2011. Before that, he served as vice president and chief of staff for the Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking (ESSN) group at Hewlett-Packard, as well as senior vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Servers and Storage (ESS) group. Before HP, Schultz served as COO of Adaptec.

Sumit Dhawan

The last piece to VMware's new End-User Computing business push was the appointment of Sumit Dhawan as head of VMware's desktop business. Dhawan will be responsible for development, management and strategy for enterprise and personal desktop products. Like Schultz, he comes to VMware from Citrix, where he most recently served as group vice president and general manager for Citrix's Enterprise Mobility Group and also as vice president of marketing.

Keith Lorizio

Microsoft was hit with a few more executive departures last month, starting with Keith Lorizio, formerly vice president of sales and marketing for Microsoft's U.S. advertising business. Lorizio joined Microsoft in 2006 as vice president of U.S. sales and marketing and was later named head of Microsoft's U.S. advertising operations. He previously served as vice president of sales at Yahoo and also worked at Alta Vista in a sales executive role. No word yet on where Lorizio is headed.

Jon DeVaan

Longtime Microsoft executive Jon DeVaan departed the software giant after nearly 30 years to spend more time with his family. DeVaan most recently served as corporate vice president for Windows development. He joined the company in 1984 and worked on many legacy Microsoft products from Excel to Windows. In 2006, DeVaan was appointed as head of the Windows Core Operating System Division, and he led development on Windows 7, and Windows 8 and 8.1.

Grant George

Another Microsoft veteran also left the company. Grant George, who had been with the software giant for nearly 20 years, stepped down from his post as vice president of testing and operations for Windows and Office. George joined Microsoft in 1994 as a software testing manager and after working on early editions of Office, he was named to the Windows Experience team in 2006. Before Microsoft, George worked as an engineer and tester at Tandem Computer for more than a decade.

Harry Li

Cloud backup vendor Intronis promoted Haiyang "Harry" Li to vice president of engineering, where he will lead the company's research and development, quality assurance, and corporate IT operations. Li most recently served as Intronis' director of developer, where he managed the company's software development operations. He joined Intronis in 2011 after working at Kenexa Corporation as managing director of software engineering. He previously worked at Salary.com for many years in various management and software development roles.

Diego Navarrete

Panda Security has a new leader. Technology veteran Diego Navarrete has joined the security vendor as CEO. Most recently, Navarrete served as director of IBM's Security Systems Division in Europe. He joined IBM in 1998 and also served during that span as director of Cloud and Server Infrastructure business in Southwest Europe.

W. Sean Ford

LogMeIn named W. Sean Ford as its new senior vice president and chief marketing officer. Ford previously served as head of worldwide marketing at Avid Technology. Before that, he held CMO roles at Zmags and Syncsort and spent several years at Oracle in executive roles, including vice president of global business unit marketing. Prior to Oracle, Ford was co-founder and vice president of product management of Upromise.

Conner Grey

Private cloud firm Metacloud tapped Conner Grey as its new vice president of operations, where he will manage the scalability architecture of third-party enterprise clouds. Grey most recently served as site reliability engineering manager at Google, where he spent nearly seven years. Prior to that, he served as a senior system administrator at Yahoo and Idealab, among other tech companies.

Ben Matheson

Cloud Security-as-a-Service provider AlertLogic named former VMware and Amazon executive Ben Matheson as chief marketing officer, where he'll lead the company's global marketing strategy. Matheson most recently served as general manager of global field and partner marketing at Amazon Web Services for nearly three years. Before that, he was senior director of global partner marketing at VMware, where he worked for more than five years. Prior to VMware, Matheson spent more than 10 years at Microsoft in various product management and marketing roles.

Molly Rector

Storage vendor DataDirect Networks named Spectra Logic executive Molly Rector as its new chief marketing officer, replacing Jeff Denworth, who left the company to pursue new opportunities. Rector spent nearly 10 years at Spectra Logic and most recently served as CMO of the storage company, where she led product management and worldwide marketing operations. Before that, she was an engineering manager at storage service provider Incentra.

Enza Alexander

Managed service provider FlexITy added Enza Alexander to its leadership team as executive vice president of sales, where she will lead the Canadian solution provider's sales strategy. Alexander most recently served as director of software sales at HP. Prior to that, she served as executive vice president and COO at Canadian systems integrator OnX Enterprise Solutions. Alexander spent more than 20 years at solution provider Metafore, and during that span served as senior vice president of finance and operations.

Erwan Menard

Storage vendor Scality tapped IT veteran Erwan Menard as COO. Menard most recently served as COO of storage firm DataDirect Networks for two years. Before that, he spent three years at HP as vice president and general manager of the vendor's communications and media solutions business. Menard also spent more than 10 years at Alcatel in a variety of executive and senior leadership roles, including president of Alcatel-Lucent's global support and convergence business group.

Nigel Martin

IT service management vendor Axios Systems hired Nigel Martin as head of global marketing. Martin comes to Axios Systems from SynGro, a customer experience management firm, where he served as director of marketing. Before that, he spent nearly four years at Havelock Europa as marketing director and also worked at Sitekit Solutions as head of marketing.