30 Notable IT Executive Moves: March 2017

Start It Off

Many of the largest players in IT announced major executive hires in March. Lenovo and Cisco lured away executives from other top vendors, Microsoft made a big addition to its board, and IBM announced changes to its channel team ranks. Meanwhile, channel heavyweights such as Connection, Avnet and New Signature disclosed executive moves of their own during the month.

Click through to check out our picks for March's 30 most significant executive moves in the IT industry.

Kim Stevenson

Lenovo has poached a top executive from Intel, Kim Stevenson (pictured), as part of its push to become a bigger player in data center technologies. Stevenson has joined Lenovo as senior vice president and general manager of the company's new Data Center Infrastructure unit. She will oversee Lenovo's core data center products and solutions portfolio, and will report to Kirk Skaugen, executive vice president and president of the data center group at Lenovo.

Stevenson had been with Intel for eight years before departing in February. She most recently served as chief operating officer of Intel's client, IoT and system architecture group, and before that had been Intel's chief information officer for more than four years. Stevenson started her career at IBM and also spent time as an executive at Hewlett Packard.

Lenovo is in the process of refining its data center strategy, and has also created new groups focused on the software-defined data center, high-performance computing and artificial intelligence applications, hyperscale systems and data center services.

Paul Ju, et. al.

Lenovo has made several appointments from within the company as part of its data center push. Three executives are assuming leadership of Lenovo's new data center units: Paul Ju as vice president and general manager of hyperscale; Madhu Matta as vice president and general manager of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence; and Radhika Krishnan as executive director and general manager of software-defined data center.

The three will report to Kirk Skaugen, executive vice president and president of Lenovo's data center group.

Ju, who has been with Lenovo since September, was previously global vice president and general manager of Hewlett Packard Enterprise's China business. Matta had previously held vice president roles at SanDisk and Fusion-io before joining Lenovo in November 2015. Krishnan was the vice president of product marketing, solutions and alliances at Nimble Storage before coming to Lenovo in February 2016.

Michael Gerentine

As the partner community continues to adapt to the new realities of software-as-a-service, IBM has appointed veteran channel executive Michael Gerentine (pictured) to head the company's software channel efforts. Gerentine will serve as vice president of software channel sales, tasked with helping to provide business direction to partners in several IBM business divisions, including cloud and Watson.

Gerentine has been with IBM since 2002, originally in the Tivoli software division, and most recently had led IBM's channel marketing efforts as vice president of marketing for IBM's Global Business Partners Organization.

Gerentine's new role will involve continuing to adapt IBM's software contracts to the dynamics of the SaaS era, the company said. He is assuming a position that had been held on an interim basis by Vincent Zandvliet, following the departure of Mark Register to DocuSign in early 2016.

Jonathan Davidson

Cisco has snagged the top technologist at one of its rivals, Juniper Networks, to join its service provider business unit and senior leadership team. Jonathan Davidson, who had been executive vice president and general manager of Juniper Development and Innovation, has joined Cisco as senior vice president and general manager of the company's Service Provider Networking organization.

Davidson (pictured) will report to Yvette Kanouff, who leads Cisco's service provider business. Davidson "brings extensive experience in strategy and network engineering leadership as well as strong customer relationships that will serve us well," Kanouff wrote in a blog post.

Davidson had been with Juniper since 2010, and before that had worked for Cisco in multiple roles over 15 years, including as director of product management.

Jon Whitlock

Carbonite has elevated Jon Whitlock to head its channel program, from his previous position as vice president of channel marketing. Whitlock (pictured) had joined Carbonite for that role in December.

Prior to Carbonite, Whitlock had spent more than four years at Kaspersky Lab, including as senior vice president of marketing in North America and as vice president for B2B marketing and channel programs in North America.

Whitlock replaces Jessica Couto, who has left Carbonite. Couto had served as channel chief at the company since December 2015.

Lisa Simpson

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has hired Nokia sales veteran Lisa Simpson as its vice president of channel sales and distribution in North America.

Simpson (pictured) will be responsible for growing the company's reseller and distribution base and driving revenue growth through partners. New opportunities for supporting partners in the education and transportation verticals will be one key focus, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise said.

During 15 years at Nokia, Simpson held a number of executive sales roles, most recently as senior director of partner sales.

Reid Hoffman

Microsoft in March announced an expansion of its board of directors with the addition of Reid Hoffman, co-founder of professional networking site LinkedIn and partner at storied venture capital firm Greylock Partners.

Hoffman (pictured) is joining the board at Microsoft three months after the close of the company's $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn. After serving as an executive vice president at PayPal, Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn in 2002, and has been with Greylock for seven years.

In a news release, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said he has "long admired [Hoffman's] ability to identify disruptive technologies," and that Hoffman "will help chart the future of our company." With the additional board seat, Microsoft now has 12 members on its board of directors.

Aicha Evans

Intel has appointed Aicha S. Evans, a veteran of the firm's wireless communications business, to serve as chief strategy officer.

Intel said it's making the appointment as part of its evolution "from a PC-centric company to a data-centric company," and CEO Brian Krzanich said in a news release that Evans (pictured) "is an industry visionary who will help our senior management team and the board of directors focus on what’s next for Intel."

Evans, now a senior vice president at Intel, has been with the company since 2006 and had spent the previous nine years in the wireless communications division at Intel. Most recently, she was general manager of Intel's Communication and Devices Group.

Hans Vestberg

Verizon said in March that it's re-organizing the company around the areas of Media and Telematics; Network and Technology; and Customer and Product Operations.

Former Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg will head up the new Network and Technology segment, beginning April 3, Verizon announced. Vestberg (pictured) will serve as executive vice president for the Network and Technology team at Verizon, responsible for developing the company's fiber-centric networks. He will report to CEO Lowell McAdam.

Vestberg was CEO of Ericsson from 2010 to 2016, and before that held a number of roles at Ericsson over two decades, including chief financial officer.

Tom Carter

Telecom software provider Procera Networks has hired Tom Carter, formerly the sales leader at F5 Networks, to head up its global sales and services.

Carter (pictured) is now senior vice president of global sales and services at Procera, with responsibility for extending the company's virtualization and cloud offerings globally, and driving sales objectives.

Carter, formerly vice president of worldwide service provider sales at F5, had left that company in early 2016 after a four-year stint. Prior to F5, he held executive sales positions at such companies as Bridgeport Networks, Truphone and Clarity Communications.

Lou Lutostanski

Avnet has named Lou Lutostanski its vice president for Internet of Things, as the distributor seeks to reach more engineers that are designing IoT solutions. His responsibilities will include strengthening Avnet's IoT strategy, as well as connections with IoT innovators, the company said.

Previously in his career, Lutostanski (pictured) spent more than a decade in various roles with Avnet before moving on to hold several sales executive positions at Motorola. He returned to Avnet in 2013, and prior to his new role had held positions of vice president of electronic component sales for the Americas and vice president of demand creation for the Americas at the company.

Lutostanski will report to Avnet chief transformation officer Pete Bartolotta.

James Thompson

Qualcomm has expanded the duties of its executive vice president of engineering, James H. Thompson (pictured), to include the role of chief technology officer. The move is aimed at enabling Thompson to align the company's technical and product roadmaps, Qualcomm said.

Thompson's responsibilities also include overseeing Corporate R&D and Corporate Engineering. He has headed up engineering at the chip maker since 2004, and has served on the firm's executive committee since 2012.

Qualcomm said that Matt Grob, who has been Qualcomm's CTO since mid-2011, will be transitioning into the role of executive vice president of technology.

Chris Ward

After a decade at solution provider GreenPages/LogicsOne, Chris Ward has departed to join Connection.

Merrimack, N.H.-based Connection, No. 21 on the CRN Solution Provider 500, has hired Ward (pictured) as senior vice president for technology solutions.

Ward had most recently served as chief technology officer at LogicsOne, a subsidiary of Kittery, Maine-based GreenPages that focuses on cloud management and consulting, since 2012. In 2015, CRN named Ward to its annual Top 25 Innovators list for his achievements as a top cloud/virtualization technology strategist.

Ed Schwartz

New Signature in March announced it has poached enterprise consulting veteran Ed Schwartz from Accenture.

Washington-based New Signature, a prominent Microsoft partner specializing in cloud solutions, said it has hired Schwartz (pictured) as executive vice president for business development in North America.

Schwartz previously had spent 14 years at Accenture, No. 2 on CRN's Solution Provider 500. Most recently, he served as a senior executive at Avanade, Accenture's Microsoft consulting practice.

Kevin Hutchins

Juniper Networks announced in March that it's making some executive changes as part of rolling out a new organizational structure.

Juniper said it has appointed Kevin Hutchins (pictured) to the newly created role of senior vice president for strategy and product line management. Hutchins, who has been with the company since 2010, was previously responsible for strategy and business development at Juniper. His new role will involve improving alignment between strategy and execution at the company, Juniper said.

Prior to Juniper, Hutchins held executive positions at such companies as IBM and Lockheed Martin.

Juniper also said that its engineering group will now report to chief development officer Andy Athreya. The moves follow the departure of Jonathan Davidson, executive vice president and general manager of Juniper Development and Innovation, to Cisco.

Jim Mackey

Though BlackBerry didn't announce the departure, the company's top executive for corporate development and strategy, Jim Mackey, disclosed that he's left the company.

In March, Mackey (pictured) told Reuters that his last day was Feb. 13. Mackey had served as executive vice president for executive operations at BlackBerry, and had been with the company since 2013.

Previous roles for Mackey included senior vice president for corporate development at SAP.

Jonathan Zdziarski

Apple has hired iOS security researcher Jonathan Zdziarski for its Security Engineering and Architecture team.

Zdziarski (pictured), who specializes in such areas as iPhone forensics, has in the past been active in the hacker community and has been critical of the FBI's attempts to defeat iPhone encryption. Zdziarski wrote in a blog post that "this decision marks the conclusion of what I feel has been a matter of conscience for me over time." He did not disclose what his specific role or responsibilities at Apple will be. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

John Walters

Pax8 has hired a veteran of such companies as Wipro and Level 3 Communications to fill a new executive role focused on service delivery.

John Walters will serve as vice president of service operations, heading the strategic direction for service delivery and technical support at Pax8.

Most recently, Walters held the role of senior director for Wipro -- a position that involved managing teams of IT professionals -- and before that he ran VoIP deployment across North America and Europe for Level 3.

Jason Peterson

EPAM Systems has hired a longtime Cognizant Technology Solutions executive, Jason Peterson, as its new chief financial officer.

Peterson (pictured), who had spent the past nine years with Cognizant, had most recently served as that company's vice president of finance, M&A and due diligence. Prior to that, he held positions in finance at such companies as E&C Medical Intelligence and ATI Technologies.

Peterson will succeed current EPAM Systems CFO Anthony Conte as of May 10. Conte, who had previously disclosed plans to resign as CFO, will remain as an advisor to EPAM for another three months after stepping down, the company said.

Ed Palmer

Winslow Technology Group has brought aboard a new chief operating officer, Ed Palmer, as the company aims to scale up its IT solutions business.

A prominent Dell partner, Winslow Technology Group said the goal is to accelerate growth with the appointment of Palmer (pictured), who had spent the previous eight years as an executive at Forsythe Technology. Most recently, Palmer had held the role of director for partner alliances and field operations at Forsythe. Before that, he held executive roles at Sun Microsystems and StorageTek.

Responsibilities at Waltham, Mass.-based Winslow Technology Group will include operational strategy, planning and execution, the solution provider said.

David Flower

Next-gen database technology firm VoltDB has appointed David Flower, a former executive at Carbon Black, as its new president and CEO.

Flower (pictured) had joined VoltDB in mid-2016 as chief revenue officer, after spending two years as vice president and managing director for EMEA at Carbon Black. Prior to that, he held executive roles at such companies as Everbridge and Compuware.

Flower succeeds Bruce Reading, who had been president and CEO of VoltDB since 2012 and departed in February.

Guy Cunningham

Managed security services provider Netsurion announced it has hired former Veritas Technologies executive Guy Cunningham as vice president for channel sales and distribution. Netsurion said Cunningham (pictured) will hold the same role at EventTracker, a subsidiary that offers security information and event management.

Cunningham was most recently director of global alliances for Veritas Technologies. Before that, his roles included regional director of sales at Connectria Hosting and senior manager for commercial channel sales in the Eastern U.S. at Symantec.

Dan Sibille

Deception technology startup TrapX Security announced it has poached an executive from Cisco Systems, Dan Sibille, to become its vice president of worldwide channels.

Sibille (pictured) had been global lead for security channel strategy and partnerships at Cisco, which he had joined in 2015 through the acquisition of Lancope Inc. Sibille had served as vice president of worldwide channels at Lancope since 2013.

Sibille's previous stints included time at Polycom, Extreme Networks, WatchGuard and 3Com.

Mark Mathews

Epson America has appointed B2B technology veteran Mark Mathews as vice president of North American commercial marketing.

The role will include enhancing Epson's commercial reseller program, along with an emphasis on the firm's commercial business solutions strategy. Areas of focus will be projector, point-of-sale, business inkjet printer and robotics technologies, Epson said.

A longtime executive at Toshiba America Business Solutions earlier in his career -- which included a stint as president and CEO -- Mathews had most recently served as president of Airwolf 3D.

Miguel Carrero

Security orchestration and automation vendor Siemplify has expanded its executive ranks with the hire of one of its advisors, Miguel Carrero, as executive vice president of strategy and business development.

Carrero (pictured) had previously served as worldwide head of product and solutions at ArcSight, a business unit within HP Software's Enterprise Security Products division.

Responsibilities at Siemplify will include oversight of strategic partnerships and key client relationships, the company said.

Bart Hickenlooper

Big data and IoT consulting firm InfoObjects announced it has hired a veteran of Cisco, Bart Hickenlooper, to join its executive team. Hickenlooper (pictured) has been appointed to the role of senior vice president of business development and client services at InfoObjects.

Previously, Hickenlooper spent a decade at Cisco, most recently as sales manager for software data and analytics in the Midwest region. He has also held roles at such companies as NTT America and RiskVision.

Based in Santa Clara, Calif., InfoObjects is a consulting partner for Amazon Web Services and has partnerships with other vendors, including SAP and Cloudera.

Danielle Jackson

Adaptive access control vendor SecureAuth has hired a former Mandiant executive, Danielle Jackson, as chief information security officer.

Prior to SecureAuth, Jackson (pictured) held the role of director of information security for Mandiant as well as for Bloomberg BNA. Other past roles have included working in data privacy compliance at Accenture.

Saying that Jackson brings "diverse experience and leadership" to SecureAuth, company CEO Jeff Kukowski said in a news release that she "is the ideal person to provide ideas, answers, thoughts and solutions for customers to reduce their risk."

Alex Seton

Digital risk management vendor Digital Shadows said it's named Alex Seton, formerly of Solera Networks, as vice president of business and corporate development.

Focuses for Seton (pictured) will include bringing innovative approaches to working with the company's partner community and go-to-market approach, Digital Shadows said.

Seton was formerly a founding VP of business development, channels and strategic alliances at Solera, which was acquired by Blue Coat Systems. Other companies he's worked for include Cisco and LANDesk.

Paul Jalbert

Progress Software announced that it's promoted Paul Jalbert, formerly the company's chief accounting officer, to be its new chief financial officer.

Jalbert takes over for Kurt Abkemeier, who has left the company, Progress said.

Jalbert had served as chief accounting officer at the firm since August 2012. Before joining Progress, he held positions at such companies as UnitedHealth Group, Picis and Verizon.

Frank Martell

Following the death of president and CEO Anand Nallathambi in March, CoreLogic announced that it's appointed Frank Martell to succeed him.

Martell (pictured), who had been serving as the company's chief operating officer, will also join the board of directors at CoreLogic.

Martell had been COO at the company since 2014, and before that served as chief financial officer at CoreLogic starting in 2011. Previously, he was president and CEO of the Western Institutional Review Board.