30 Notable IT Executive Moves: March 2013

Start It Off

CRN's monthly roundup of notable IT executive moves continues through March, including a major coup for Microsoft (and a big loss for Oracle) and some notable retirements at ARM Holdings and BlackBerry. Have a look.

Judson Althoff

The big news in March came out of Oracle as the software company's channel chief Judson Althoff resigned from his position as Oracle's senior vice president of worldwide alliances and channel and embedded sales to join Oracle rival Microsoft. Althoff, a 14-year veteran at Oracle, will serve as Microsoft's president of North America sales and marketing.

Warren East

ARM Holdings' longtime CEO Warren East announced he will retire this summer. East, a 19-year veteran with the U.K.-based chip maker, spent the last 12 years leading ARM during a huge boom for the company as its mobile processor market share skyrocketed. East will officially step down on July 1 and hand over control to ARM president Simon Segars.

Frank Vitagliano

Veteran channel chief Frank Vitagliano unexpectedly parted ways with Juniper Networks last month. One of the channel's most well-known executives, Vitagliano spent 7 years with the networking company, most recently serving as senior vice president of Americas partners. Prior to Juniper, Vitagliano spent more than 30 years at IBM in a variety of roles, most recently as vice president of IBM's Worldwide Distribution Channels.

Sherri Liebo

Cisco named Sherri Liebo as its new vice president of partner marketing. She most recently served as vice president of marketing for Cisco Services and has been with the networking leader since 2005, serving a number of roles over the years including director of sales and marketing for Cisco Services in North America. Prior to that, Liebo worked at HP.

Andy Rubin

The godfather of Google's Android operating system has stepped aside; Andy Rubin resigned as Google's senior vice president of mobile and digital content this month. Rubin, who co-founded Android in 2003 and joined Google when the mobile platform company was acquired in 2005, will have a new, unspecified role at Google, according to CEO Larry Page.

Sundar Pichai

Meanwhile at Google, there's a new man filling Rubin's shoes as head of Android. Sundar Pichai has been tapped to lead Google's mobile business. Pichai formerly led development of Google's Chrome browser and Chrome operating system, as well as the company's Google Apps business. Pichai, a 9-year veteran of the company, will continue overseeing the Chrome and Google Apps businesses as well as Android.

Joe Vitalone

ShoreTel channel chief Joe Vitalone has a new home -- at competitor Mitel. Vitalone, who served as vice president of channel management at ShoreTel, worked for the company from 2005 to 2009 before leaving to take a position at LifeSize. He rejoined ShoreTel last May but left the company a second time to become Mitel's executive vice president of sales for the Americas.

Mike Lazaridis

BlackBerry co-founder Mike Lazaridis is calling it a career at BlackBerry. Lazaridis stepped down from his position as vice chairman of the board of directors and is retiring from the smartphone company he helped create. He recently co-founded a new venture capital firm, Quantum Valley Investments. Lazaridis was co-CEO of BlackBerry for many years before stepping down in 2012 along with co-CEO Jim Balsillie.

Mike Schroepfer

Facebook has a new chief technology officer. Mike Schroepfer was promoted to the position of CTO after previously serving as vice president of engineering at Facebook since 2008. Prior to Facebook, Schroepfer served at CT for Sun Microsystems' data center division and also served as vice president of engineering at Mozilla where he led development of the Firefox Web browser.

Robert Pryor

Fujitsu tapped Robert Pryor as its new president and CEO of Fujitsu America. Pryor comes to Fujitsu from Genpact, formerly GE Capital International, where he served as an executive vice president. Before Genpact, he held a number of management roles at Hewlett-Packard, EDs, Capgemini and Ernst & Young over the last 30 years.

Kevin Lynch

Adobe Systems' chief technology officer is moving on. Kevin Lynch resigned from his position as CTO and executive vice president at Adobe this month to take a new role at Apple. Lynch will serve as vice president of technology at Apple, a new role at the technology giant. He joined Macromedia in 1996 and spent 8 years at Adobe following its acquisition of Macromedia in 2005.

Steve Benvenuto

Cisco has tapped Steve Benvenuto as the networking giant's newest leader of its Worldwide Partner Programs team. Benvenuto previously served as senior director of business development and emerging technologies at Cisco and was responsible for helping drive Cisco Smart Solutions. He'll continue to oversee his emerging technology and Smart Solutions operations as he transitions to his new role.

Ricardo Moreno

Cisco also promoted Ricardo Moreno this month as leader of the Cisco's U.S. and Latin America field partner organizations. Moreno, a 15-yeard Cisco veteran, most recently served as senior director of strategy, planning and programs within Cisco's channel business. He previously served as chief of staff and director of business development and operations for Cisco channel chief Edison Peres.

Debra Chrapaty

Nirvanix has tapped Debra Chrapaty as its new CEO. Chrapaty previously served as CIO of Zynga, a popular online game company. Before Zynga, she held a number of IT executive roles, including senior vice president of Cisco's Collaboration Software Group and corporate vice president at Microsoft.

Kathy Mikells

Xerox has a new chief financial officer. Kathryn Mikells will leave her current position as senior vice president and CFO of ADT Corp. in May to become Xerox's CFO. Mikells previously served as executive vice president and CFO of Nalco Holding Company as well as executive vice president and CFO United Airlines parent company UAL Corp.

Bob Braham

Former EMC executive Bob Braham has joined SGI as chief marketing officer. Braham previously served as vice president of marketing for EMC's Enterprise Storage Division. Before that, he served vice president of product marketing at Brocade and also held various roles at Equinix, NetApp and Sun Microsystems.

Janet Byron

Top Cisco partner Spanlink has added Cisco veteran Janet Byron to its team. Byron, who spent 10 years at Cisco and helped create Cisco's Unified Customer Voice Portal (CVP), will serve Spanlink as senior solution architect. She has over 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, having also spent time at Boston Technology and GTE Laboratories.

Kevin Deierling

Mellanox made a number of executive appointments this month, starting with Mellanox veteran Kevin Deierling as co-vice president of marketing. Deierling was most recently chief architect at Silver Spring Networks. He served as vice president of product marketing at Mellanox from 1999 to 2005, and he also spent 3 years as vice president of marketing at Spans Logic.

Gilad Shainer

Mellanox also promoted Gilad Shainer as co-vice president of marketing. Shainer most recently was vice president of market development at Mellanox. He joined the company in 2001 as a design engineer and held a number of roles in the company over the last 10-plus years. Shainer and Deierling will oversee Mallanox's marketing and branding efforts together.

Cristóbal Conde

Storage vendor Whiptail has added Cristóbal Conde to its board of directors. Conde, the former president and CEO of SunGard, currently serves as a senior advisor to two investment firms, TPG Capital and Providence Equity Partners. Conde spent 9 years at the helm of SunGard and established the company as one of the largest private software vendors in the world.

Robert Whiteley

Riverbed Technology has tapped Robert Whiteley as its vice president of product solutions marketing. Whiteley previously spent 10 years at Forrester Research as an industry analyst, research director, and operations leader. Prior to Forrester, he served as a senior network analyst at Network Strategy Partners.

Blair Parkhill

Storage vendor X-IO promoted Blair Parkhill to vice president of marketing. Parkhill joined X-IO in 2010 as a member of the technical marketing team, and since that time, he has served the company as director of product management and director of product marketing. Before joining X-IO, he worked at Compaq and Hewlett-Packard.

Benny Koren

Mellanox promoted Benny Koren to vice president of architecture. Koren most recently oversaw Mellanox's switch silicon, firmware, software and system architecture. This is his second turn at the company; he was a lead architect at Mellanox from 2000 to 2008 and then became vice president of architecture at Kaminaro before returning to Mellanox in 2010.

Mark Swendsen

Cloud backup vendor Axcient has added Mark Swendsen to its executive team as vice president of sales. Swendsen previously spent a number of years at ShoreTel. He served as vice president of sales for service providers at ShoreTel and also served as managing director of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) for the company.

Gideon Rosenberg

Mellanox also promoted Gideon Rosenberg to vice president of Israeli legal affairs. Rosenberg came to Mellanox in 2010 and most recently oversaw legal affairs and corporate governance for EMEA, Asia and Israel. Prior to Mellanox, he held a number of roles at McKesson Technologies, including chief counsel.

Patrick Coughlin

Telecom service firm Tech Valley Communications added Patrick Coughlin to its executive team as senior vice president of sales and marketing. Coughlin most recently held the position of senior vice president of sales and marketing at Fibertower. Before that, he was vice president of enterprise and carrier sales and marketing at RCN Metro.

Rafael Torres

Solid-state drive maker OCZ appointed Rafael Torres as its chief financial officer. Torres replaces former CFO Arthur Knapp, who is retiring. Before joining OCZ, Torres served as vice president and CFO of Captella Photonics and also served as vice president and CFO of Power Integrations.

Craig Dynes

Acronis has named Craig Dynes as its new chief financial officer. A 30-year veteran of the software industry, Dynes previously served as the CFO and senior vice president of Pegasystems for 7 years. He also served as CFO of Demandware and was formerly the president and CEO of Narad Networks, a cable TV equipment maker.

Sean Carroll

Arcadia has a new CEO. The healthcare IT company named Sean Carroll as CEO and member of its board of managers. Carroll joined Arcadia from Nuance Communications, where he served as senior vice president of health information management for the software company. Before that, he was CEO of Webmedx before the company was acquired by Nuance.

Douglas Bergeron

VeriFone Systems CEO Douglas Bergeron has stepped down after leading the company since 2001. Prior to VeriFone, he was a group vice president at Gores Technology Group and president and CEO of Geac Computer Corp. VeriFone Chairman Richard McGinn was named interim CEO and has assumed Bergeron's duties.