30 Notable IT Executive Moves: December 2016

Last Moves For 2016

For the IT industry, 2016 was a year filled with lots of executive turnover and the last month of the year was no exception.

In fact, many IT companies made a number of adjustments to the top tiers of their executive structures, including such companies as RSA, Polycom, and CompuCom where there were changes in the CEO post. Channel companies including Accenture and Unisys also saw a number of executive moves in the last month of the year.

Interested in finding out who came in and who went out in December? Read on to see which executive changes occurred in December.

Terry Richardson

Hewlett Packard Enterprise named Terry Richardson to be vice president of U.S. channel sales for the enterprise business, part of the company's new sales structure aimed at accelerating channel sales growth.

Richardson comes to the role as a veteran channel chief with 30 years of experience at enterprise computing companies. Most recently he was managing East Region partners for HPE and in 2014 headed up the enterprise channel for Hewlett Packard, from which HPE was created in 2015. Before HP Richardson held sales and channel management posts at a number of IT companies including EMC.

Frank Vitagliano

Frank Vitagliano, vice president of channel sales for Dell Technologies, parted ways with the computer giant last month in search of new channel management opportunities.

During his four years at Dell, Vitagliano helped bring some channel authority to the one-time direct sales company and played a ’big role’ in Dell's channel success, according to John Byrne, Dell's global channel chief.

Vitagliano told CRN that his exit from the company is well timed, following the completion of Dell's acquisition of EMC.

Byrne has since stepped into Vitagliano's shoes as Dell's VP of channel sales. And in early January Vitagliano was named CEO of Computex Technology Solutions.

Dan Stone

IT consultancy CompuCom promoted Dan Stone to the position of CEO last month, replacing Don Doctor, who will again assume the mantle of company chairman after 22 months as CEO.

Stone moves into the position following his stint leading CompuCom's end-user enablement division, which helps IT executives manage the convergence of next-gen technologies like social interaction, mobility, big data and cloud computing.

Stone will become the Dallas-based company's fourth CEO since longtime CEO Jim Dixon left the position in 2013.

Ann Sung Ruckstuhl

Unisys hired Ann Sung Ruckstuhl as its new chief marketing officer in early December, replacing Inder Singh who moved into the position of CFO following the retirement of Janet Haugen in November.

Ruckstuhl brings more than two decades of experience to the Blue Bell, Pa.-based company, previously holding positions with LiveOps, Symantec, NortonLive Services, Sybase, eBay and Hewlett-Packard.

In her new position with Unisys, No. 19 on CRN's SP500 list, Ruckstuhl said she will focus on expanding Unisys' security message to the marketplace.

She will report directly to Peter Altabef, president and CEO of Unisys.

William Humes

Ingram Micro said goodbye to a number of executives last month, including CFO William Humes, following the close of the company's acquisition by $30-billion Chinese conglomerate HNA Group.

Ten days after the Dec. 6 conclusion of the enormous $6 billion deal, Humes and Executive Vice President and General Counsel Larry Boyd both departed from Ingram, joining former president and chief operating officer Paul Read and other executives who left the $43 billion, Irvine, Calif.-based distributor following the announcement of the acquisition deal.

Peter Leav

BMC Software hired Peter Leav as the company's new CEO, replacing Bob Beauchamp who vacated the position to assist the company's transition into its "next growth stage."

Beauchamp, who served 16 years at the helm of the digital enterprise management software company, will remain as chairman of the BMC board.

Leav previously held a number of executive positions at companies including NCR and Motorola, and most recently served as CEO and president of unified communications technology provider Polycom. Leav left Polycom in September when Siris Capital Group acquired it in a $2 billion deal.

Amit Yoran

RSA President Amit Yoran left the company in December, taking on the jobs of chairman and CEO at security startup Tenable Network Security.

Yoran started in his new position on Jan. 3, replacing former CEO Ron Gula who stepped down in June. Tenable's co-founders, Jack Huffard and Renaud Deraison, had been running the company in the interim and now serve as president and COO, and CTO, respectively.

Yoran's departure from RSA comes as Dell continues to integrate RSA deeper into its product portfolio. Following a plan the company unveiled in October, Dell is creating a Dell Endpoint Data Security and Management portfolio that combines Dell, RSA and VMware offerings.

Justin Harvey

In a move to boost its cybersecurity prowess, Accenture appointed Justin Harvey as managing director and global lead for the company's incident response practice.

Harvey brings more than two decades of experience to his new position at the Dublin, Ireland-based company - No. 2 on CRN's Solution Provider 500 list - most recently serving as the CSO at Fidelis Cybersecurity.

’My goal is to really help the existing global 2000 customers that we have … not only [to] just respond to threats, but also to build awareness and help these organizations get better," Harvey said in an interview with CRN.

Stacey Wu

Fortinet named former Avaya executive Stacey Wu as its new head of marketing as the security technology company looks to boost its marketing strategy.

Wu assumed her position as senior vice president of global marketing at Fortinet last month, leaving her job as vice president of marketing and demand generation at Avaya, a position she had held since July 2014.

In an interview with CRN, Wu said she decided to leave Avaya because she wanted to continue her career in security, having previously held marketing leadership roles at Symantec, Check Point Software Technologies and NEC.

Wu also said she was attracted by what she described as Fortinet's strong network security technology story.

Craig Stilwell

Citrix promoted Craig Stilwell to the position of vice president of worldwide partner strategy and sales, replacing Kimberly Martin who had held the job since the summer of 2015.

Stilwell previously served as vice president of Citrix' Americas channel sales and field operations, vice president of southeast U.S. sales, and most recently as the vice president for U.S. commercial sales.

At the time of the move, Citrix did not comment on the reason for the management change.

May Mitchell

Cylance boosted its marketing prowess last month by hiring May Mitchell as the company's new vice president of worldwide field and channel marketing. The announcement of her hire came just five days after she left her position as vice president of worldwide field and channel marketing at competing security company Symantec.

Symantec declined to comment on Mitchell's departure, but confirmed that her post was filled by Muffin Mott, who now holds the title of head of global channel marketing. Mott has been operating in that role since September, the company said, a job she held at Blue Coat Systems, which Symantec acquired in August.

Leslie Bois

Leslie Bois left her position as North American channel chief at Kaspersky Lab last month to take a new job at a undisclosed security startup.

After eight years with the company, Bois left the Moscow-based security vendor "to pursue an external opportunity," according to a Kaspersky spokesperson at the time.

In the interim Michael Canavan, senior vice president for B2B sales at Kaspersky, has assumed Bois' responsibilities for managing regional channel sales and the partner community.

In 2016 Bois was named to CRN's Top 100 Executives list and to the 2016 Power 100, Most Powerful Women of the Channel list.

Alan Black

Cloud application vendor InsideSales.com appointed former Zendesk vice president and Chief Financial Officer Alan Black to the position of company CFO.

Prior to working at Zendesk, Black was the president and CEO of network security vendor Intelliden. There, he facilitated a restructuring of the company, guiding it through development and launch of new products until IBM acquired Intelliden in 2010.

’I've had incredible opportunities to build and grow unique companies with true industry leadership potential. InsideSales is clearly one of the early leaders in the emerging AI and predictive analytics market and its potential is vast and exciting," Black said in a company statement.

Kevin Summers

Avnet hired Kevin Summers as its new chief information officer in December, replacing former CIO Steve Phillips who left the company after 11 years of service.

The appointment makes Summers responsible for Avnet's global IT strategy and enterprise effectiveness initiative, responsibilities that the new hire will tackle with his 25 years-plus experience in the field, including holding CIO positions at H&R Block, Lowe's, Whirlpool and The Coca-Cola Company, and senior executive positions at AT&T and General Electric.

Graham McBeth

Former Avnet Abacus president Graham McBeth was promoted last month to president of Avnet's recently acquired British distribution company, Premier Farnell. Avnet Abacus is the distributor's business that specializes in interconnect, passive and electromechanical products.

McBeth will be replacing interim president Steven Webb, a Premier Farnell executive who stepped into the role when Avnet acquired the company in October of 2016 to assist its integration into the Avnet organization.

Webb will remain with the company until Jan. 31 to assist in the leadership transition as McBeth assumes responsibility for managing the strategic direction, day-to-day operations and performance of Premier Farnell.

Robert K. Zapfel

Xerox said goodbye to executive vice president Robert K. Zapfel at the end of December as part of the organizational changes the company is undergoing as it splits into two separate, publicly traded companies.

Zapfel was with the company for two years after being hired in April of 2014 as the president of Xerox services, the business processes and outsourcing part of the company that now operates as its own entity under the name Conduent.

Prior to his stint at Xerox, Zapfel held the title of general manager at IBM from 2002 to 2013.

Bob Crowther

Unisys appointed Bob Crowther as the senior finance director for its EMEA businesses, reporting directly to CFO Inder Singh and the Global Vice President of Financial Planning and Analysis, Grant Sheatsley.

Crowther joined Unisys, No. 19 on the CRN Solution Provider 500, last month after serving as CFO for software technology start-up Silent Circle. Before that, Crowther held the position of EMEA CFO for Dell Services following Dell's acquisition of Perot Systems.

Gary Wang

Unisys also boosted its federal business unit last month when it hired Gary Wang as Unisys Federal vice president of cloud and infrastructure services.

In his new position Wang will head the company's portfolio of cloud-related products and services for Unisys' Federal government clients.

The Blue Bell, Pa.-based company also appointed former CSRA executive Peter O'Donoghue to be vice president of applications services at Unisys Federal.

In his new position, he will fill a similar role as Wang, as the head of the organization's application modernization initiatives.

David Rubal

DLT Solutions hired David Rubal as its first chief technologist for data and analytics, a role the company created to support emerging public sector data analytics needs.

Previously, Rubal spent more than 35 years working in the field of data science at companies including Oracle, Blue Coat Systems, Tableau Software, EMC and Cisco. He was also the principal co-author of the 2009 White House Office of Management and Budget report.

Rubal also currently serves as the Data Analytics Industry Advisory Board member at the George Mason University Volgenau School of Engineering.

Upon starting his new position at DLT, No. 39 on the CRN Solution Provider 500, Rubal began overseeing the Herndon, Va.-based company's data analytics, data science, big data and business intelligence services portfolio.

Rawlinson Rivera

Hyperconverged technology company Cohesity hired Rawlinson Rivera – a former VMWare executive – as its new global field chief technology officer.

In the position Rivera will lead Cohesity's product team and work closely with the company's worldwide customer-facing teams and customer base.

Rivera joined Cohesity after leaving VMWare after nearly a decade where he most recently served as principal architect in the Office of the CTO in the storage and availability business unit.

’I've long admired [Cohesity's] strategy and vision from the outside and I'm looking forward to working closely with the leadership and product teams," he said in a company statement.

Scott Aronson

Former VMWare channel chief Scott Aronson was hired as the new chief revenue officer at customer feedback application company Medallia.

Aronson brings more than two decades of experience to the position, most recently as senior vice president of worldwide field operations for Pivotal Software where he worked for three years. That followed a decade-long stint at VMWare where he served in a number of positions, including senior vice president of global channels and alliances, before leaving in 2013.

"We're helping companies listen to their employees and customers and act on their feedback," Aronson said in a statement about Medallia's software.

Philippe Lignac

Telecom, mobility and cloud services company Asentinel appointed Philippe Lignac to the position of chief sales officer, adding him to its bench of global executives.

Lignac is tasked with continuing the company's growth. In a statement the company said it has grown rapidly over the past three years, both organically and through its acquisitions of eMOBUS and Anatole.

"The market has entered a major refresh cycle… this presents a compelling opportunity for an innovative, up-and-coming market leader like Asentinel," Lignac said in a statement.

Carrie Reber

Data center infrastructure software company DataCore tapped former Datto marketing executive Carrie Reber to be its new vice president of worldwide marketing.

In her new position at the Fort Lauderdale Fla.-based company, Reber is responsible for driving the company's sales and channel initiatives.

She brings more than two decades of experience to the position and has served in senior management positions for a number of software companies including Infinio, Veeam and Quest Software.

Reber also worked in various marketing capacities for companies including Aelita Software, Legent Corp. and CompuServe.

Mike Onystok

Third-party technology distributor TBI promoted Mike Onystok in December, making him responsible for overseeing all sales, support and training within the company's Omni-Center business unit.

Onystok started with the company as a supervisor of its inside sales unit nine years ago and has since held a number of positions including director of national telesales and, most recently, director of national channel sales.

"It's been an amazing experience to grow with TBI over the past several years, … I feel we are in a strong position right now, and am looking forward to building on that in 2017 and beyond," he said in a statement.

Michael Carpenter

Endpoint protection technology company CrowdStrike appointed Michael Carpenter to be president of global sales and field operations last month with the expectation that he will expand the company's sales organizations and continue CrowdStrike's exponential growth.

Over the past three years Crowdstrike has grown by 2,665 percent, the company said in a statement, and in 2016 increased deployments of its Falcon sensor by nearly 300 percent year-over-year.

Before his current appointment, Carpenter served in executive-level posts at Titanium and Intel Security.

"In my 20 years of security experience, I've never seen innovation at the scale and impact that CrowdStrike Falcon has delivered in the endpoint security market, … CrowdStrike is an unstoppable force in the market," Carpenter said in a statement.

James Stickland

Authentication technology developer Veridium named James Stickland as the company's new CEO, only three months after the company, formerly known as Hoyos Labs, re-branded itself and launched its latest biometric authentication solution, VeridiumID.

As Veridium's new CEO, Stickland will be leading the company from its headquarters in London, utilizing the experience he gained as a senior executive at companies including HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco and, most recently, at U.K.-based financial technology firm Red Deer Systems.

Phil Neray

Phil Neray has joined up with cybersecurity company CyberX as the company's new vice-president of marketing.

Neray brings a history of executive marketing experience to the Framingham, Mass.-based company, including past positions at security technology companies Veracode, IBM Security/Q1 Labs, Guardium and Symantec.

Most recently Neray led a re-branding initiative at cloud-based application security company Veracode, which reported bookings growth of nearly 100 percent in two years, according to a statement from CyberX.

Stacy Repult

Cloud platform provider Nimbix appointed Stacy Repult as the company's chief financial officer.

In her new position Repult is overseeing the company's annual business and strategic planning processes, leading all of its accounting, human resource and financial operations, and is tasked with continuing the company's "path of rapid growth," according to a statement from Nimbix CEO Steve Hebert.

Repult comes to Nimbix with 20 years of experience, most recently serving as the vice president of finance for commercial fleet management solution provider Omnitracs. Before that, she was a managing director at SLR Consulting.

Steve Love

Cloud-based communications company Dialpad expanded its executive team by naming Steve Love as its first chief financial officer.

Love comes to the company with over 20 years of IT industry experience, most recently as the CFO for application-to-person texting provider Mblox. Before that he was the CFO for predictive analytics company Evolv and held senior and executive financial management positions with several public technology companies including Informatica and Portal Software.

Dialpad grew by more than 450 percent between 2012 and 2015, driving the company to expand its leadership team, including the new CFO position.

Erik Lagerway

Dialpad also appointed Erik Lagerway to the position of vice president of client solutions last month and named Khaled Saffouri as the company's new vice president of commercial sales.

Lagerway brings a 20-year history of entrepreneurship to the San Francisco-based communications company. He co-founded and served as chief operating officer at VoIP softphone and software development tool vendor Hookflash, and co-founded audio conferencing company Gaboogie. Before that he held executive management positions with Shift Networks Inc., Xten, CounterPath, and Vocalscape Communications.

Saffouri spent 14 years at Rackspace before joining Dialpad and was present as the company grew from a private organization of 60 employees and just over $20 million in revenue in 2001 to a public entity that employed 6,000 people and reported $2 billion in revenue upon his departure in 2015.