30 Notable IT Executive Moves: June 2016
Start It Off
Companies across the channel were gearing up for the summer, rolling out executive changes that either caught partners by surprise or had them cheering. The changes extended all the way to the top levels of some of the biggest businesses in the industry, with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco Systems, Symantec, NetApp, Dell, IBM and more revealing major executive moves this month. Solution providers also made some moves, with Dimension Data, Accenture and more unveiling top-level executive changes. Take a walk back through the month with CRN, as many of these executive moves will undoubtedly set the tone for these companies in the months to come.
Martin Fink
As part of a major sales and marketing restructuring at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Chief Technology Officer Martin Fink is set to step aside at the end of the year. The restructuring was part of a push by CEO Meg Whitman to drive better sales and marketing opportunities and execution, she said in a blog post. Fink had been with HP for more than 30 years, serving as CTO and director of Hewlett Packard Labs since 2012. Over his long tenure with the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, Fink also held a variety of positions in which he oversaw the business-critical systems group, the HP-UX Kernel Lab and HP OpenView Telecom.
John Hinshaw
Also as part of the restructuring at Hewlett Packard Enterprise this month, the company said Chief Customer Officer John Hinshaw would be stepping down. The move will take effect at the end of the year, the company said. Hinshaw joined HP five years ago as executive vice president, technology and operations. He assumed his most recent role in 2015 after the company split. As chief customer officer, Hinshaw was responsible for leading strategic accounts and alliances, as well as customer advocacy, cybersecurity and information technology. COO Chris Hsu will now oversee the IT and cybersecurity teams, the company said. Prior to joining the company, Hinshaw held leadership positions at Boeing, Verizon and Accenture.
Greg Clark
Symantec said in June that it had named Greg Clark as incoming CEO, replacing current CEO Michael Brown, who said in April that he planned to step down. Clark comes to Mountain View, Calif.-based Symantec as part of the security vendor's blockbuster June acquisition of Blue Coat Systems, where he was CEO. Clark has been CEO of Blue Coat since 2011, his most recent position in a long career in software and security company leadership roles. Since taking that job, he helped lead the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company through a period of turnaround, which included taking it private through a private equity acquisition and more recently making multiple key acquisitions to plant its stake in the cloud security market. Partners cheered the appointment, calling it "awesome" and saying Clark is the right choice to take Symantec forward.
Lee Caswell
NetApp lost one of its biggest cheerleaders with the departure of Vice President of Product, Solutions and Services Marketing Lee Caswell for a key marketing role with VMware's storage business. In his new role at VMware, Caswell will be responsible for product management and product marketing in that company's storage and availability business unit. With the jump, Caswell is returning to Palo Alto, Calif.-based VMware, having served there in 2002 and 2003 as executive vice president of marketing and business development and helping launch the virtualization vendor into the server market. Prior to that, he held roles at Fusion-io, which was acquired by SanDisk, and was co-founder and CEO of Pivot3 from 2005 to 2007. NetApp, Sunnyvale, Calif., said it already has begun an internal and external search for Caswell's replacement, although in the meantime Caswell's team is reporting to Brian Bakstran, acting NetApp chief marketing officer.
Paul Perez
Paul Perez, a former technology visionary at Dell, took a position at New York-based JPMorgan as managing director of global technology. Perez joined Round Rock, Texas-based Dell in March 2015 from Cisco, taking a position as enterprise chief technology officer and playing a key role in Dell's build-out of an architecture to battle the rival networking giant. Robert Hormuth, a Dell Fellow, will be the interim head of Dell's CTO team, the spokesman said. Partners said Dell will need to find a strong tech executive to lead the company's enterprise division going into the completion of its planned acquisition of EMC.
Ed Walsh
IBM unveiled new leadership for its storage division at the end of the month, appointing former IBM storage head Ed Walsh as general manager, effective July 11. His appointment comes at an important time for IBM storage, which has seen dropping sales in recent quarters. Walsh returns to IBM, Armonk, N.Y., most recently from Catalogic Software, where he served as CEO. He has also held storage CEO roles at Storwize (acquired by IBM in 2010), Virtual Iron and Avamar. He will take over for Greg Lotko, who has been serving as the interim general manager of IBM storage. Lotko will continue his role as vice president of development for IBM storage. Catalogic has named Ken Barth as its new president and CEO.
Jeff Jacobson
As Xerox marches toward its split into two companies, the company named Jeff Jacobson as the future CEO of the product side of the business, an $11 billion business that will retain the Xerox name. Jacobson is a veteran of the printing and graphics technology industry. He joined Xerox, Norwalk, Conn., in 2012, leading the Xerox Technology Division of the current company. Prior to joining Xerox, he held executive positions at Presstek, Eastman Kodak and Kodak Polychrome Graphics.
Ashok Vemuri
Xerox also said Ashok Vemuri had been tapped to lead the company's services business that will emerge later this year from the split of Xerox. Vemuri served as president and CEO of iGate from September 2013 to October 2015, just months after it was acquired by solution provider giant Capgemini. The split is expected to be completed by the end of this year, Xerox said in the statement about Vemuri's appointment. Until then, Vemuri will serve as an executive vice president for Xerox Corp., Xerox said.
Peter McKay, William Largent
Veeam Software, which develops data protection technology for cloud and virtualized environments, shook up its executive lineup in a big way, naming former VMware executive Peter McKay as president and COO and former Executive Vice President William Largent as CEO. McKay will report to Largent, the Baar, Switzerland, company said. Largent replaces co-founder Ratmir Timashev, who will remain with the company as a director. Co-founder Andrie Baronov will now be chief technology officer. All of the executive changes are effective as of July 15, the company said. The company said the new, experienced executive team will help prepare Veeam for its "next growth phase," as it looks to hit $1 billion in revenue by 2019.
Brett Dawson
Longtime Dimension Data CEO Brett Dawson resigned from the top role, saying he wanted to pursue other interests. Dawson had been CEO of the company for 12 years. South Africa-based Dimension Data – No. 11 on CRN's 2016 Solution Provider 500 list – appointed Chief Operating Officer Jason Goodall to take Dawson's place, according to a company statement. Goodall is an 18-year veteran of the company. The news came just before CRN reported that Dimension Data was experiencing layoffs across multiple departments at the company.
Kelly Bissell
Accenture moved all of its security resources under the same department, naming former Deloitte executive Kelly Bissell to lead the new security practice as global managing director for Accenture Security. Bissell joined the Chicago-based company, No. 2 on the 2016 CRN SP500 list, after nearly 14 years at Deloitte, where he lead cyberrisk services across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), as well as spearheading identity and access management, strategy and governance, and incident response service offerings. In the new role, Bissell has been tasked with growing Accenture's security practice to more than $1 billion in revenue, up from between $500 million and $1 billion today. Bissell will do this by growing Accenture's presence in such areas as mobile security and traditional governance, risk and compliance (GRC) consulting, the company said.
Annette Clayton
APC parent company Schneider Electric landed new leadership this month, appointing Annette Clayton as president and CEO of the company's North American business. Clayton reports to Jean-Pascal Tricoire, chairman and CEO of Rueil-Malmaison, France-based Schneider Electric. Clayton is a five-year veteran of the company, most recently serving as chief supply chain officer. Before joining Schneider Electric, she spent five years as vice president of global operations at Dell, as well as 23 years at General Motors. Clayton replaces Laurent Vernerey, who is stepping down after three years at the helm and 30 years overall at the company.
Tricia Atchison
Former Veritas executive Tricia Atchison landed a new role as vice president of global partner marketing for CA Technologies. She is responsible for partner communications on a global basis and developing channel marketing programs. She has been charged with developing the New York-based company's go-to-market strategies with its partners and working to increase integration between the company's global and local channel marketing efforts. While at Veritas, which previously was part of Symantec, she was senior director of Americas channel marketing.
Soni Jiandani, Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain and Luca Cafiero
Cisco lost four of its top engineers as part of an exodus after an internal company reorganization that some partners said is creating a power struggle within the San Jose, Calif.-based company. Those departures include Soni Jiandani, Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain and Luca Cafiero, executives who were involved in the research and development of several of Cisco "spin-ins" including Insieme in 2012. An internal memo from CEO Chuck Robbins about the news said the departures were "based on a disconnect regarding roles, responsibilities and charter that came to light" after the reorganization.
"I want to recognize Mario, Prem, Luca and Soni for the countless contributions they have made to Cisco. I have personally learned so much from them, and they will always be an important part of Cisco's engineering story," Robbins said.
Mark Horan
Avalon Technologies, a Dell Premier partner based in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., made a big executive addition this month, naming former Dell sales executive Mark Horan as its CEO. Horan replaces founder Brian Flynn, who said the new leader is responsible for helping the solution provider expand geographically and hire aggressively. Horan had served as commercial and public sector vice president and general manager, preferred accounts division, until February.
Rosanna Pellegrino
Security risk and user behavior analytics company Gurucul made a big jump into the channel, launching its first partner program and naming Rosanna Pellegrino as its first channel chief. Pellegrino will now serve as vice president of strategic alliances at the Los Angeles-based company. Pellegrino most recently served as vice president of strategic alliances at Lumeta and has additional experience building startup partner programs at iSight Partner, Qualys and RedSeal Networks. Partners cheered Pellegrino's appointment, saying it was a sign of Gurucul's investment in the channel.
Mike Lawrie
Mike Lawrie plans to resign from his position as chairman and member of the board of directors of CSRA, the federally focused solution provider that split off from CSC late last year. Lawrie will remain as chairman, president and CEO of CSC, Falls Church, Va. Lawrie said the move came in response to CSC's decision to merge with the Enterprise Services unit of HPE, which would compete with CSRA in the public sector. He will be replaced by Nancy Killefer, who currently serves as CSRA Lead Independent Director. The change will be effective as of Aug. 9.
Robert Park
BlueJeans Network, a cloud-based video communications services company based in Mountain View, Calif., said it had expanded its executive lineup with the addition of Robert Park as chief financial officer, a new position for the company. Park has been charged with continuing the company's journey toward profitability. He comes to BlueJeans Network with a long financial background, including having roles at PayPal, Chegg, Practice Fusion and McKesson.
"BlueJeans is investing in an impressive bench of executive talent. … We're truly setting ourselves up for long-term success," said Krish Ramakrishnan, CEO of BlueJeans, in a statement at the time. "The video communications revolution is real and we're excited to have Robert on board as we continue to take over the enterprise."
Paul Lehman
Optiv Security continued to expand its executive lineup, naming former Experian executive Paul Lehman as its new CIO. Lehman replaces Anthony Crutcher, who joined the company in May of last year to help facilitate the merger of Accuvant and FishNet Security into Optiv. Lehman joins the Denver-based solution provider with more than 25 years of experience in technology, most recently as CIO and senior vice president of global technology services for Experian. He is now responsible for helping shape Optiv's IT strategy and execution, the company said.
Jeremiah Grossman
SentinelOne, Mountain View, Calif., landed a big executive win, appointing Jeremiah Grossman as its new chief of security strategy. Grossman, a renowned security executive, most recently served as the founder of WhiteHat Security. Prior to founding WhiteHat Security 15 years ago, Grossman served as CISO at Yahoo.
"Throughout my career, I've looked to solve the most critical security issues that are challenging organizations across the world," Grossman said in a statement at the time. "I'm thrilled to be joining SentinelOne to help them protect customers against today's threats posed by all forms of malware, especially ransomware, as it has surged in 2016 and become increasingly popular among attackers. The company's leadership team has done a tremendous job of developing an innovative technology that I look forward to helping build upon."
Eric Pinto
Dallas-based VAR Staffing said June 21 that it had named Eric Pinto as director of business development and client services. In the role, Pinto is responsible for working with the company's channel partner clients to help them build better teams and strong IT services practices. Pinto comes to VAR Staffing from Relyenz, where he was senior product manager for security.
"With the addition of Eric to the VAR Staffing leadership team, we continue to strengthen our ability to deliver best-in-class talent acquisition solutions to the VAR/MSP/ITSP community. We are confident Eric's impact will be significant and resonate loudly throughout the channel. Furthermore, we are thrilled to have him on the team and excited for what the future will hold for VAR Staffing and our clients," said James Bier, principal and co-founder, in a statement at the time.
Tina Piermarini
Ciber, No. 43 on the 2016 CRN SP500, said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer Tina Piermarini had resigned. The company did not give the reason for Piermarini's resignation. Piermarini had been with Ciber, Greenwood Village, Colo., since June 2014. The company said it had entered in an agreement for Piermarini to provide consulting services to the solution provider, at a rate of $20,000 per month through Dec. 16, 2016.
Nathan Perdue, Yaron Bartov
GuardiCore, with headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel, expanded its executive lineup early in June with the addition of Nathan Perdue as vice president of sales for North America and Yaron Bartov as chief financial officer. Perdue joins the internal data center security and breach detection company from Tegile Systems, where he was director of sales for the Northeast, and Bartov joins the company from Wix.com, where he most recently served as vice president of finance and vice president of operations.
"The addition of Yaron and Nathan to the GuardiCore leadership team comes at a time of strong growth and opportunity for our company," said Pavel Gurvich, CEO and co-founder of GuardiCore, in a statement at the time. "Their respective experiences will provide valuable leadership in the areas of strategic financial and sales management that will allow us to grow the company profitably and significantly in the years ahead."
Kathy Moore, A.J. Narula
As the privileged account management company looks to expand globally, Thycotic said it had bolstered its executive lineup, adding a new chief financial officer and executive director of federal sales. Kathy Moore will now serve as CFO and A.J. Narula will serve as executive director of federal sales. Moore joins Washington, D.C.-based Thycotic from Allied Telecom Group, where she was CFO. She will now be responsible for the company's financial operation and strategy. Narula joins Thycotic from AppAssure Software, where he was director of federal sales. He will now be responsible for expanding the company's federal business.
Cory White
StarTek, a business process outsourcing services company based in Greenwood Village, Colo., named Cory White as chief of sales and marketing. White joins StarTek from Convergys, where he most recently served as vice president for the company's health-care and government verticals. Prior to that, he held a variety of sales and business operations leadership roles at Xerox.
"Cory's appointment represents StarTek's continued focus on sales efforts to capture new clients and grow profitably," said Chad Carlson, CEO of StarTek, in a statement at the time. "With a proven track record of growing businesses, managing high-performing sales teams and sustaining profitable growth, we anticipate that Cory will provide both sales and operational expertise that will help to enable StarTek to effectively demonstrate the added value of BPO services we bring to clients across multiple verticals. In addition, his extensive experience in health care should serve us well as we continue to build and evolve this emerging vertical."
Barry Padgett, Steve deRham, John Torrey
SAP, Walldorf, Germany, consolidated its SAP Business One, SAP Anywhere and SAP Business ByDesign teams into a single group this month, appointing Barry Padgett to lead the group as president. He comes into the role from Concur, where he served as chief product officer. SAP also said Concur CIO Steve deRham would be assuming the responsibilities of CIO for SAP BNA, responsible for building end-to-end systems for Concur. SAP also said John Torrey will now serve as chief corporate development officer for SAP. He had previously served as chief strategy officer for SAP Business Networks and Applications Group.
Dan Haley
StarLink, a network and data security distributor, said at the beginning of June that it had hired a new CEO as part of its international expansion strategy. Dan Haley will now serve as CEO of the company for North America. Haley comes to StarLink from Bradford Networks, where he was president and CEO. The hiring, in particular, is part of a push by the company to expand its presence in North America, including moving its headquarters to Cambridge, Mass.
"The U.S. expansion is a fundamental part of our vision, and we are thrilled to have Dan Haley on board with us, further strengthening our management team, to spearhead the growth that we anticipate in North America going forward," Nidal Othman, managing director at StarLink, said in a statement at the time.
Jeff Klenner
Evotek, a solution provider based in San Diego, named Jeff Klenner as its new president. The appointment comes after a period of fast growth for the company, which Klenner has been charged with continuing by overseeing operations as the company's customers undergo digital transformations. A 20-year industry veteran, Klenner comes to Evotek most recently from BMC Software, where he was vice president and general manager.
"Jeff will be invaluable in establishing Evotek as a leading next-generation, digital enabler for our customers," said Cesar Enciso, managing partner at Evotek. "As an industry veteran, he has the talent and vision to unlock growth in our business. We are excited to have an executive of his caliber joining our team at this critical stage of our expansion."
Marcio Saito
Sandy, Utah-based Opengear said it had appointed Marcio Saito as chief technology officer. Saito comes to the critical infrastructure management solutions company from Cyclades, where he served as CTO for 13 years. He is now responsible for the company's product and technology strategy, as well as hiring technical talent.
"Marcio comes to Opengear with a history of demonstrating foresight and strategic acumen in the data center infrastructure space," said Rick Stevenson, CEO of Opengear, in statement at the time. "His expertise will be invaluable as Opengear continues to create innovative products designed to manage critical IT in data centers and beyond, and to further enhance the technical features of our network-resilient solutions. … Marcio is a powerful addition to our leadership team, and the perfect fit to drive our product and technology strategy."
Bryce Judd
Smart-home solutions company Control4 appointed Bryce Judd as its new senior vice president of worldwide sales. Judd joins the Salt Lake City-based company from Motive, a subdivision of Nokia, where he led sales and business operations. Prior to that, he served as vice president of channel sales and business development for Motive, when it was part of Alcatel-Lucent. He replaces Jim Arnold, who held the role since February 2007, although Arnold will remain with the company in an advisory role.