30 Notable IT Executive Moves: October 2015

Start It Off

September was a slow month for executive moves, and October followed suit. But there were still some big-name executives jumping ship or competitors snatching high-level leaders from their rivals last month. Companies that saw headline-grabbing changes included Symantec, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, Accenture, Citrix and VMware. Not many of the executives who left companies said where they were headed -- which should make for an interesting few months to come.

Take a look at some of the moves that made waves in the channel last month.

Adrian Jones

After helping Symantec launch an invigorated approach to the channel at its Partner Engage event last month, Adrian Jones, executive vice president and general manager of global sales, left the vendor. The company declined to say the cause, but confirmed the move. Jones has been replaced by John Sorensen, senior vice president of Americas sales, in the interim. Jones joined Symantec in June 2014 as senior vice president of Asia and was promoted to lead worldwide sales eight months ago. Partners CRN spoke to at the time said the departure was concerning to them, as they had started looking at joining the Symantec partner ranks because of Jones' influence as a channel-friendly leader.

Julie Larson-Green

Longtime Microsoft executive Julie Larson-Green has a new role at the software vendor. Last month, Larson-Green was tapped to manage the company's Office client applications and services team, adding to her role as chief experience officer for Microsoft's services group. She replaces Corporate Vice President Kirk Koenigsbauer, who will now be working in the Applications and Services Group. Larson-Green joined Microsoft in 1993 as a program manager and has also served as executive vice president of Microsoft's Windows Division and executive vice president of the Devices and Studios Group.

Nick Urick

Palo Alto Networks nabbed a high-level FireEye executive last month to lead its Federal Sales business. Nick Urick, former vice president of Federal Sales at FireEye, joined the security vendor as vice president of Federal Sales. Before FireEye, Urick led Federal Sales for F5 Networks. He is now responsible for driving the company's federal strategy and team.

"The federal sector is a key growth area for Palo Alto Networks, and we're thrilled to have Nick joining our team. He has a wealth of experience selling to the federal government and building high-performing teams that should prove instrumental to our continued success with DoD, Intel and Civilian customers," Mark Anderson, executive vice president of Worldwide Field Operations, said in a statement at the time.

Robert Calderoni

Citrix landed new top leadership in October in Executive Chairman Robert Calderoni, who will replace retiring President and CEO Mark Templeton on an interim basis. Calderoni will be charged with leading the company as it undergoes significant pressure from activist investor Elliott Management, which has been pushing for the sale of multiple business units, management changes and a review of its operations and capital structure. Calderoni will remain as executive chairman, the company said, and Templeton will remain in an "advisory role through the end of the year." The search commenced in July when Citrix said Templeton would be retiring after 14 years in the top role. Citrix said the search for a permanent CEO is still underway.

Michael Fuhrman

Peak 10 kicked off the month with the appointment of a new chief technology officer. On Oct. 1, the IT infrastructure and cloud services provider said former Cisco executive Michael Fuhrman would be assuming the top technology role, responsible for driving the company's product and service strategy. Fuhrman most recently served as vice president of security services and cloud operations at Cisco, a company he was at since 1998.

’Mike’s track record of growing and delivering cloud and security services, bringing new products and solutions to market, and success with M&A integration will serve Peak 10 well as we take the next steps to grow our company and further improve on our customers’ experience," CEO David Jones said in a statement at the time.

Jessica Verrilli

Jessica Verrilli has left Google Ventures to rejoin Twitter, Re/code reported in October. Verrilli, who joined the company in May as an investment partner, will return to Twitter in a senior role involved with the company's M&A activity, the report said. Before leaving the social media company for Google Ventures, Verrilli held roles on Twitter's corporate development team.

Mathew Lodge

Startup Weaveworks landed a big executive hire last month, naming former VMware executive Mathew Lodge as chief operating officer. Lodge was most recently vice president of cloud service for VMware, a position he held for five and a half years. Weaveworks is a container technology startup that develops the Weave network for Docker, which is a software-defined network across containers topped by cross-container services. Lodge will be replaced at VMware by Angelos Kottas, senior director of product marketing for cloud services, the company said. In his new role, Lodge will be responsible for running U.S. operations for the startup.

Riccardo Di Blasio

After resigning from VMware, Riccardo Di Blasio joined storage startup Cohesity in October. Cohesity, which landed $70 million in venture funding in June, focuses on secondary storage of data that's stored in devops and analytics environments. Di Blasio served as vice president of sales and marketing for VMware's vCloud Air public cloud service and was one of the key executives leading the company's charge into the public cloud market. He will now serve as chief operating officer and head of field operations at Cohesity, responsible for expanding the company's field operations, marketing, manufacturing and IT teams.

Alan Lawrence

PCM, No. 29 on CRN's 2015 Solution Provider 500 list, named a new president last month to lead its PCMG government and education subsidiary. Alan Lawrence will now lead the company's government, education and health-care businesses, charged with accelerating their growth. He will report to PCM President Jay Miley.

"Alan understands what it takes to be successful and grow in collaboration with strategic vendor partners. With his deep experience in government, including proven growth strategies in both the channel and OEM environments within the Public Sector, we expect that Alan will drive significant growth in our public sector business," Miley said in a statement at the time.

Lawrence joins PCM from GTSI, where he most recently served as vice president and general manager of Strategic Programs Divisions. He has also held positions at HP and Cisco.

Scott Gordon, John Grillos

Security startup FinalCode named two new top executives to its lineup last month, appointing Scott Gordon as its new chief operating officer and John Grillos as senior vice president of worldwide sales. FinalCode is led by former ForeScout Technologies CEO Gord Boyce and delivers an enterprise-grade file-sharing security platform. Gordon joins the startup from ForeScout, where he served as chief marketing officer. Grillos joins the company from Vysk Communications, where he was a director. The pair have been charged with leading the company's sales and execution strategy, including for the startup's growing channel program.

Ashok Vemuri

Solution provider behemoth Capgemini revealed the departure of iGate CEO Ashok Vemuri. Capgemini completed its acquisition of iGate on July 1, a $4 billion purchase that launched the Paris-based solution provider further into the U.S. market. Vemuri left for what the company called "a mutual agreement to pursue other interests outside of Capgemini" after assisting in the transition process, which the company said is "progressing as planned." Vemuri had served as CEO of iGate since September 2013.

Scott Gainey

Endpoint security vendor SentinelOne nabbed former Palo Alto Networks exec Scott Gainey last month as its new senior vice president and chief marketing officer. Gainey most recently served as vice president of marketing at Palo Alto Networks. He has also held positions at Cisco, Xsigo Systems (acquired by Oracle) and NetApp. The appointment comes just a week after the vendor said it had attained $25 million in new venture capital funding, and CEO Tomer Weingarten said in a statement at the time that Gainey's addition will "play a pivotal role" as the company uses the new financing to "establish SentinelOne as the leader in next generation endpoint protection."

Janet Matsuda

Flash storage solutions company Nimble Storage named Janet Matsuda as its new chief marketing officer. Matsuda joined the company from security vendor Blue Coat Systems, where she served most recently as senior vice president of worldwide marketing. She has also held positions at Egnyte, AMD and Mercury Interactive. CEO Suresh Vasudevan said Matsuda will be instrumental as the company "doubles down" on marketing to drive customer acquisitions.

"Janet brings in-depth marketing expertise and a proven track record in building category-leading brands and executing highly-effective marketing initiatives that boost brand awareness and revenue growth. We welcome Janet to our executive management team," Vasudevan said in a statement at the time.

Matt Mills

Former Oracle executive Matt Mills has a new role as president and chief operating officer at big data company MapR Technologies. He will report to co-founder and CEO John Schroeder. At Oracle, where he spent more than 20 years, Mills most recently served as senior vice president and general manager. In his new role, Mills will be responsible for helping grow the company and accelerate its market leadership, the company said.

David Morton Jr.

Seagate said Oct. 21 that it had appointed David Morton Jr. as executive vice president and chief financial officer. He replaces Patrick O'Malley as CFO, who will now be executive vice president focused on strategy and operations. Morton has been with Seagate since 1995, most recently as senior vice president, treasurer and principal accounting officer. Both executives will report to CEO Steve Luczo in their new roles.

Mike Moran

Westell Technologies named Mike Moran as senior vice president and chief technology officer on Oct. 20. Westell is an Aurora, Ill.-based company that provides in-building wireless, intelligent site management, cell site optimization and outside plant solutions. Moran joins the company from MTM Tech, where he served as president. He has also held positions at Tellabs, McAfee, Netscout, Pulsecom, Alcatel, Siemans and GTE. In his new role, he will be responsible for forming the company's product strategy and bringing those visions to reality through project management and development.

Nir Simon, Robert Cancilla, Steve Kenniston

Enterprise storage company Infinidat had a series of top level executive changes last month. The Needham, Mass.-based company named Nir Simon as chief financial officer, Robert Cancilla as vice president of business development and Steve Kenniston as vice president of product marketing. Simon joins the company from IBM Israel, where he was CFO. Cancilla joins Infinidat from Robin Systems, where he was CEO. He has also served as vice president of IBM's Storage Systems brand. Kennison was most recently the storage technology evangelist at Catalogic Software, and has also held positions at IBM, Storwize and EMC.

Ricardo Moreno

Network control vendor Infoblox named a new channel chief last month in former Cisco executive Ricardo Moreno. Moreno will now serve as vice president of worldwide channels. At Cisco, Moreno most recently led the networking giant's partner organizations in the U.S. and Latin America, and in other roles helped develop and shape the company's channel programs. Before his 18 years at Cisco, Moreno held positions at Goodyear Tire, Mercedes-Benz and Banco Bradesco.

"Ricardo has the skills and experience to build a world-class channel partner program for Infoblox," Thorsten Freitag, executive vice president of worldwide field operations, said in a statement at the time. "I'm confident Ricardo will drive 'win-win' improvements in our channel program, making it easier and more profitable for channel partners to work with us."

Gerri Martin-Flickinger

Adobe lost one of its top executives in October, as Gerri Martin-Flickinger, senior vice president and chief technology officer, moved to Starbucks to serve as chief technology officer. Martin-Flickinger most notably helped migrate Adobe's strategy to the cloud around its subscription-based Creative Cloud. Before Adobe, Martin-Flickinger held positions at VeriSign, Network Associates and McAfee.

Omid Kordestani

Google lost its chief business officer in October, with Twitter naming Omid Kordestani as its new executive chairman. Kordestani had been in the role for only about a year, replacing Nikesh Arora, who left in July 2014 for Softbank. He had been with the company since 1999.

Nick Margarites

On Oct. 27, Metalogix named Nick Margarites as chief financial officer. Metalogix is a vendor of unified management software to help companies migrate, manage and secure data. Margarites joins the vendor from Sourcefire (which was acquired by Cisco in 2013), where he served as vice president of finance and chief accounting officer. CEO Steven Murphy said in a statement that Margarites' addition comes at a critical time for the company, just about a year after its sale to Permira Advisors and during an evolution of the company from a content management tool provider to a cloud content management firm.

Lukas Manasek

Enterprise office company Y Soft has created a new role of chief sales officer. In the new role, Lukas Manasek will help the company develop and support its sales across its entire product portfolio, which includes 3-D printers and mobile printing solutions. The role includes developing relationships with the company's partners as well as internal sales teams. The new role is a promotion for Manasek, who previously served as vice president of sales for the company's EMEA region. He has been with the company since 2008.

Matt Goulet, Peter Merkulov

Data security and file sharing company Globalscape made two executive additions, naming Matt Goulet as chief operating officer and Peter Merkulov as vice president of product strategy and technology alliances. Goulet has been with Globalscape since 2013 and previously served as vice president of sales and marketing. He will continue those roles, while also assuming responsibilities for the company's go-to-market and technology alliances. Merkulov joins Globalscape from Kaspersky Lab, where he served as executive vice president and chief product officer.

Lisa Weaver, Kamalesh Dwivedi

Startek, a Denver-based outsourcing company that focuses on business process outsourcing, supply chain management and customer care, lost two top executives last month. On Oct. 12, the company reported in an 8K filing that Lisa Weaver, senior vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer, had resigned from the company to pursue other opportunities. Weaver will remain with the company through its third-quarter earnings filing and to transition her position, the company said at the time. Also, Chief Information Officer Kamalesh Dwivedi left the company Oct. 14, though the company did not specify why.

Kathryn Mikells

Xerox said Oct. 5 that Chief Financial Officer Kathryn Mikells would be leaving the company as of Oct. 31. The company said Mikells was leaving to "pursue another professional opportunity," but did not specify what that would be. While Xerox looks for a permanent replacement, Vice President of Investor Relations Leslie Varon will serve as CFO in the interim. Mikells joined Xerox in 2013. She previously served in financial leadership roles at ADT, Nalco and United Airlines.

Marc Carrel-Billiard

System integrator behemoth Accenture, No. 2 on the 2015 CRN SP500 list, named Marc Carrel-Billiard managing director of Global Technology Research and Development on Oct. 15. Carrel-Billiard has been with Accenture since 1998, most recently as global lead for emerging technology. In his new role, Carrel-Billiard will be responsible for leading Accenture Technology Labs, Accenture Open Innovation and the company's annual Technology Vision research.

"Marc is a visionary technologist who is highly respected in our industry and exceptionally qualified to lead this area of our company," CTO Paul Daugherty said in a statement. "He has extensive experience in developing and delivering emerging technologies, including key areas of IT such as cognitive computing and robotics. Throughout his career, Marc has distinguished himself as a thought leader and evangelist for new and innovative technologies, and has also had great success as an Accenture leader delivering business results to clients."

Tom Thimot

Clarity Solution Group, a Chicago-based data and analytics consulting company, named a new CEO in October in Tom Thimot. In his new role, Thimot will be responsible for helping expand the company's customer base as well as its geographic footprint. He joins Clarity Solution Group from Cognizant, No. 8 on the CRN 2015 SP500 list, where he most recently served as vice president of the Emerging Business Accelerator. He has also held positions at Kazeon, GoRemote, Netegrity, CaseCentral and Oracle.

Jonathan Doros

To lead its investor communications, Symantec has named Jonathan Doros as vice president of investor relations. Doros joins Symantec from Solera, where he served as vice president and head of investor relations. He has also held positions at CA Technologies, Raymond James, UBS, Jefferies & Co. and Standard & Poor's.

"Jonathan’s strong financial and operational experience will be a critical asset as we continue to communicate our long-term value proposition to our shareholder and analyst communities,’ said Thomas Seifert, executive vice president and CFO, in a statement. "We look forward to adding him to our team as we continue to identify opportunities to increase shareholder value at Symantec."

Dror Nadler

Mobile virtualization company Cellrox named a new top leader last month. On Oct. 13, the Boston- and Tel Aviv-based company revealed that Dror Nadler would be its new CEO. Nadler had served as senior vice president of sales and strategic alliances since May 2014. In his new role, Nadler will be responsible for developing the company's go-to-market approach, commercialization strategy and leading the company through its Series B round.

"As we transition from an engineering-focused startup to a customer-driven company, we need a leader who can drive widespread adoption of Mobile Virtualization. Dror has shown beyond doubt that he is the best person for this job," said Omer Eiferman, Cellrox co-founder and a board member, in a statement. "At this stage in Cellrox’s growth, having a US-based CEO will be a key strategic advantage for the company."

Jill Tracy

Integrated Media Technologies, a Los Angeles-based consulting firm and systems integrator, has hired Jill Tracy as senior account executive, the company said last month. Tracy joins the company from HyTrust, where she served as strategic account executive. She has also held positions at Guidance Software, Adobe and Proofpoint.

"The addition of Jill to the IMT team represents a very important move for us," said Eric Wyner, senior vice president and general manager, in a statement. "She is going to help us expand our security and data management practices, as she works with her considerable enterprise client network here in the Southwest. Jill has wonderful energy, and is very passionate about helping customers solve complex technology problems."