30 Notable IT Executive Moves: August 2012
Packed August
August is typically a sleepier month in the IT industry, but there were big moves aplenty among better-known executives: some appointments, some major departures and some moves that are best described as strange. Here's a look at August's roundup, following an equally loaded month of comings and goings in July.
Hubert Joly
Best Buy is in a troubled state, and the man its directors have chosen to mount a revival is Hubert Joly, a highly regarded turnaround expert who most recently was president and CEO of global hospitality and travel company Carlson. Joly's pay package is an eye-popper -- $32 million over three years -- but his resume is lengthy, having led restructuring efforts at Vivendi and in France, Electronic Data Systems.
Bob Mansfield
An interesting reversal at Apple: Bob Mansfield , Apple's longtime hardware chief who'd announced his retirement in June, is in fact staying on at the company to work on unspecified future projects. Meanwhile, Craig Federighi, who'd been tapped to replace Mansfield, is getting a bump to senior vice president, Mac Software Engineering, and Dan Riccio is elevating to senior vice president, Hardware Engineering. All three executives now report to Apple CEO Tim Cook.
John Visentin
It was a year ago that John Visentin replaced Tom Iannotti as head of HP Enterprise Services, but earlier this month, HP confirmed Visentin's exit to "pursue other interests." Mike Nefkens, senior vice president and general manager, EMEA for HP Enterprise Services, has succeeded Visentin on an acting basis -- the latest example in a seemingly never-ending series of executive changes at the technology giant.
Marius Haas
Marius Haas, the well-known former head of HP's Networking unit and point man for HP's M&A activity, is headed for Dell as president, Enterprise Services. Haas had left HP in 2011 to take a technology adviser role for private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts Co., and at Dell, he replaces …
Brad Anderson
Brad Anderson, who Dell said "made a personal decision to seek new opportunities." Anderson had led Dell Enterprise Solutions, the business unit of Dell encompassing servers, storage, networking and security, since 2005.
Michael Klayko
Is it a move that paves the way for a long-rumored sale of Brocade? Time will tell, but for now, Brocade CEO Michael Klayko is on the way out, having announced his resignation on Brocade's quarterly earnings call in mid-August. Klayko has been CEO of Brocade since 2005, when it acquired the company he'd previously run, Rhapsody Networks. He is expected to remain at Brocade's helm until his successor is named.
Paul Mountford
Paul Mountford hasn't been Cisco's channel chief since 2005, but it's still the role for which the departing Cisco senior vice president is best remembered. Cisco confirmed Mountford's departure from the company after more than 16 years. He most recently was senior vice president, global enterprise, and had also run Cisco's emerging markets theater.
Joseph Wetzel
EarthLink's latest quarterly earnings report had a surprise revelation: Joseph Wetzel, the company's president and COO, is leaving the company at the end of the year. EarthLink stated that Wetzel's duties will fall to various "operating level executives" reporting to CEO Rolla Huff. Wetzel has been at EarthLink since 2007.
Kathy Savitt
Yahoo is expected to have a significant executive makeover now that CEO Marissa Mayer is in charge, and Mayer hasn't wasted any time bringing aboard C-level managers, even as longtime Yahoo executives depart. The most recent major hire is Kathy Savitt, who is set to join the company officially Sept. 14 as chief marketing officer. Savitt most recently was founder and CEO of Lockerz, and previously was executive vice president and chief marketing officer at American Eagle Outfitters. She also held executive roles at Amazon and a consultancy, MWW Savitt.
Anand Chandrasekher
Anand Chandrasekher certainly knows his way around the chip market, having spent 25 years at Intel before his exit last year. Now, Chandrasekher is bringing his experience to Qualcomm, which appointed him chief marketing officer in early August.
John Byrne
A former channel chief on the way up: AMD in early August said it had appointed John Byrne, a former vice president of channel sales, to the role of chief sales officer. Byrne's most recent role at AMD was general manager of global accounts, but in his new role he will report directly to AMD CEO Rory Read.
Jim Keller
Leave the world's top technology company? That's the path for Jim Keller, who has left his role as a director in Apple's platform architecture group and is returning to AMD as chief architect for chip designs.
Bob Bruce
Bob Bruce, Aruba's vice president of channel sales, left the company in early August after three years in the role. Bruce, a channel veteran of more than three decades, had previously held channel chief roles at Meru Networks, Juniper and Cisco, and Aruba partners agreed that he'd left the wireless LAN specialist's channel program better off.
Jim Harold
Into the Aruba channel chief role steps Jim Harold, the former worldwide channel chief of Blue Coat Systems and Enterasys. Harold, who'd been ousted as part of a management restructuring at Blue Coat last year, most recently was vice president, global channel sales at data protection company SafeNet.
Amanda Jobbins
It was a brief tenure running partner marketing at Cisco for Amanda Jobbins, who confirmed in August she would leave her post as vice president, global partner marketing, a little more than a year after being named to the role. Jobbins cited family reasons and being able to return to her native United Kingdom as factors in the resignation, according to Cisco.
Alberto Torres
HP needs mobility expertise, and it made a key hire in mid-August: Alberto Torres, the former head of Nokia's MeeGo smartphone OS, is coming on board as senior vice president of HP's new Mobility Global Business Unit, reporting to Todd Bradley, senior vice president of HP's Printing and Personal Systems Group (PPSG).
Adam Bechtel
The lure of Apple has proven strong for many a Silicon Valley veteran -- especially if that veteran's company is in the midst of management overhaul. That's the case for Adam Bechtel, Yahoo's vice president of infrastructure, who according to reports is headed for Apple in an as-yet-unconfirmed role.
Warren Adelman
Go Daddy is making acquisitions and expanding its channel program, but it's also changing CEOs, having said right at the end of July that Warren Adelman would step down. Adelman will move into a new role as special adviser for Go Daddy's strategy and global policy, while Scott Wagner will serve as interim CEO. Wagner joined Go Daddy from Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts' portfolio operations team, KKR Capstone, which is an investor in Go Daddy.
Martyn Etherington
Mitel's slow revitalization has brought plenty of shakeup to its executive team following the hiring of CEO Richard McBee about 18 months ago. The latest new Mitel face is Martyn Etherington, now Mitel's chief marketing officer, who joined the company following a number of executive roles at IBM, Sequent, DEC and, most recently, Tektronix. Stephen Beamish, who'd been Mitel's vice president of marketing and business development, has become vice president of business development following Etherington's appointment.
David McCrory
Exits aplenty at VMware lately, and one of the most recent was David McCrory, a major driver of Cloud Foundry, and now a senior vice president at Warner Music Group. In a blog post announcing his exit, McCrory said that "for me personally, I needed a change from a vendor role to that of a customer. The timing has absolutely nothing to do with Paul Maritz's departure (which was coincidental)."
Travis Sales
Speaking of VMware exits, Travis Sales, a top VMware staff engineer, left the company in August to become CIO of Breakthrough Technology Group, a cloud, managed services and telecom-focused solution provider. Sales had been with VMware since 2008 when it bought his previous company, Thinstall.
Bill Brooks
The channel's a small world, and distribution's even smaller, so it's always significant when executives cross over from one major disty to the next. Bill Brooks, who spent more than 25 years at Ingram Micro, was confirmed in early August as Tech Data's new vice president of sales, technical services. He replaced longtime Tech Data executive Barb Miller, who had stepped down a few months earlier.
Todd Nightingale
Meraki is coming on strong in the networking space thanks to a cloud-managed portfolio covering wired, wireless and security. It also continues to build out its executive team and in mid-August confirmed the hiring of Todd Nightingale as vice president, strategy and solutions architecture, reporting to CEO Sanjit Biswas. Nightingale, who knew Meraki's founders during their days at MIT, most recently was general manager for the AirDefense unit of Motorola.
Stewart Bloom
Bit of a strange turn of events at Aspect Software, the contact center and workforce optimization specialist. The company named Stewart Bloom its new CEO, succeeding Jim Foy, who will remain executive chairman of Aspect's board. But Aspect only eight weeks earlier had named former Avaya senior vice presdient Mohamad Ali to be CEO of Aspect's workforce optimization group in what was supposed to be a co-CEO structure with Foy. Ali had to exit Aspect due to a legal dispute with Avaya, which sued to enforce a noncompete agreement. Bloom, for his part, is a 28-year technology veteran and most recently CEO of Escalate Retail, with previous C- and senior vice president-level positions held at GERS Retail Systems, Capgemini, Mainspring, Ernst & Young and DSSi.
Wayne Powers
More well-placed Yahoos on the move: Wayne Powers, who'd been senior vice president of Yahoo's U.S. sales since 2010, has left Yahoo to take over as president and group publisher of Parade Publications, which is owned by Advance Publications, also the parent company of Conde Nast.
Sam Schillace
A nice executive get for fast-growing cloud storage vendor Box: Sam Schillace, who came on in August as vice president of engineering. Schillace's former company, Writely, was sold to Google in 2006 and became a big part of the project that became Google Docs, after which Schillace became an engineering director for Google Docs. Box, it should be noted, also nabbed Evan Wittenberg, HP's former chief talent officer, as its new vice president of people.
Stuart Raburn
Solution Provider 500 stalwart TekLinks won this year's award for Top Technology Practice: Managed Services, and earlier this summer was acquired by Pamlico Capital, which took a majority interest in the solution provider from previous investor Symmetric Capital. As part of that transition, Jim Akerhielm has replaced Stuart Raburn as TekLinks CEO. A 20-year technology veteran, Akerhielm was CEO of NuVox when it was sold to Windstream in 2010. Raburn will remain on TekLinks' board, advise the company and will retain his minority ownership position.
Rob Rosiello
Riverbed is continuing to expand its channel executive team and in mid-August added Americas and EMEA channel chiefs. Rob Rosiello is Riverbed's new vice president, channel sales, Americas, and he comes to Riverbed following channel executive roles at Motorola Solutions, Alcatel, Cabletron Systems and Riverstone. Meanwhile, Nino D'Auria is Riverbed's vice president, channel sales, EMEA, following several years as CEO of an Italy-based systems integrator, Lutech SpA, and management positions at EMC, Compaq and DEC.
Chris Cordom
Cloud provider NaviSite continues to round out its executive team, and its latest major appointment is Christopher Cordom, senior vice president of worldwide sales. In the role, Cordom manages NaviSite's direct and channel sales efforts. He's been with the company since 2009, following a stint as head of Avaya's global sales for multinational organizations and various management positions at Avaya, Lucent and AT&T.
Kevin Hall
Top solution provider GreenPages has a new chief information and technology officer, Kevin Hall, who was named to the role in early August. Hill's responsibility is to work with GreenPages' senior leadership team to drive corporate technology strategy and ensure GreenPages is tackling the right tech priorities. Before GreenPages, he was president and managing partner at K Hall & Company, a consultancy, and was also CIO of ProFlowers, which was sold to Liberty Media in 2006. Hall goes back a number of years with GreenPages CEO Ron Dupler; the two worked together from 1995 to 2000 at solution provider Amherst Technologies.
More Executive Moves
The Revolving IT Door:
30 Major Channel Chief Changes In 2012
30 Notable IT Executive Moves: July 2012
The Most Significant IT Executive Moves Of 2012 (So Far)