30 Notable IT Executive Moves: August 2016

Start It Off

Solution providers and vendors closed out the summer months in style, with executive moves that ushered in new channel, financial and business leaders. Those changes included a new president at Palo Alto Networks, a new channel chief at Informatica, a new CIO at Sophos, a new CEO at OnX Enterprise Solutions, and many more. The leaders on this month's roundup of IT executive moves have been charged with leading the technical, business and channel futures for their companies through the end of the year and beyond. Take a look back at who landed new roles in the channel last month.

David Peranich

Palo Alto Networks said at the end of the month that it had nabbed former Riverbed Technology executive David Peranich to serve as executive vice president of worldwide sales. Peranich will now be responsible for the security vendor's sales and channel organization's go-to-market strategy, leveraging his background of sales, channels and operations roles at Riverbed. The appointment was announced as Palo Alto Networks held its Sales Kick Off event in Nashville, Tenn., last month. He replaces Mark Anderson, who will now serve as president at Palo Alto Networks.

Mark Anderson

Palo Alto Networks named a new president this month, appointing former executive vice president Mark Anderson into the role. A more than four-year veteran of the company, Anderson now is responsible for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company's sales, go-to-market strategy, customer support and business development. CEO Mark McLaughlin said in a statement at the time that Anderson's appointment, alongside that of his replacement David Peranich, will help Palo Alto Networks accelerate its growth and scale in the market.

"I am delighted with these appointments that will enable us to continue our march to be the leading global security company and seamlessly scale our organization. I look forward to working with both Mark and Dave for years to come," McLaughlin said in a statement.

Rodney Foreman

Longtime IBM veteran Rodney Foreman left the company to take a role as senior vice president for partner ecosystems at Informatica. Foreman had been with IBM for more than 20 years, including several senior positions at IBM, most of which focused on supporting Big Blue's channel. He most recently served as vice president of cloud channel sales at IBM. In his new role, Foreman will help refocus the data integration powerhouse on an emerging channel strategy designed to expand its VAR ecosystem and drive more indirect business. The company is hoping to grow its channel business to at least 40 percent of its go-to-market approach, Foreman told CRN.

Tony Young

Sophos expanded its leadership lineup in August, creating a new position for Chief Information Officer and naming Tony Young to the role. The new CIO role will put Young in charge of the security vendor's strategy, security and management of the global IT organization, the company said. Prior to joining Sophos, Young served as CIO at GoPro. He has also held notable roles as senior vice president of cloud and subscription sales and CIO and executive director for North Asia at Informatica.

"I am very pleased to welcome Tony to our senior management team," Sophos CEO Kris Hagerman said in a statement at the time. "As we set our sights on the exciting path ahead, this is the right time for us to strengthen the leadership of our IT function and invest for future growth. Tony brings the global experience and strategic vision to ensure IT is not only an enabler for our business, but a differentiator."

Felix Marquardt

Rapidly rising next-generation endpoint security startup Cylance announced the expansion of its leadership team in August to add Felix Marquardt as president of Cylance International. Marquardt will be responsible for Cylance's global strategy and team, the company said. Marquardt joins the Irvine, Calif.-based company from roles as a strategic adviser to heads of national governments and Fortune 500 companies.

"I am delighted to bring Felix on to our senior management team," said Stuart McClure, president and CEO, in a statement at the time. "Felix is a truly global thinker and he brings a wealth of international strategy experience and a vast international network that will prove invaluable as Cylance continues to grow from a groundbreaking U.S. security company to a global industry leader."

Tom Signorello

OnX Enterprise Solutions, No. 46 on the 2016 CRN Solution Provider 500, said it had hired longtime industry veteran Tom Signorello as its new CEO. Signorello is best known in the industry for helping Unisys, Xerox and CSC transform from legacy product to services-focused companies, a transition he plans to drive at OnX. Signorello told CRN at the time that he is particularly looking to drive services investments at OnX around cloud, security and data center. He most recently served as senior vice president and managing director, North America for Diebold, a legacy ATM manufacturer looking to push into managed services.

Adam Selipsky

Tableau Software, a business analytics software developer based in Seattle, said on Aug. 23 that it had appointed former AWS exec Adam Selipsky as the company's new president and CEO, replacing outgoing executive Christian Chabot, who will now serve as chairman of the board of directors. The change is effective Sept. 16, the company said. Selipsky had been with AWS for more than 10 years, most recently as vice president of marketing, sales and support for the Amazon business unit, where he played a key role in the cloud service provider's explosive growth. Selipsky has been charged with taking Tableau to the "next stage of growth," including leading its rapid pace of growth and facilitating the launch of the latest edition of its visual analytics software.

Tony Olzak

Trace3, an Irvine, Calif.-based company ranked at No. 54 on the 2016 CRN Solution Provider 500, expanded its focus on security, behavioral analytics and threat prevention with the appointment of Tony Olzak as vice president of security, a new position for the company. Olzak comes to Trace3 from Sigmanet, where he spent nine years and most recently served as vice president of advanced technology solutions. At Trace3, Olzak will be responsible for building a security strategy that moves beyond firewalls and legacy technology to one that focuses on analytics, machine learning, automated workloads and adaptive response.

Manish Goel

After Hewlett Packard Enterprise's sale of its Enterprise Services business to merge it with CSC, HPE said that several executives were departing the company as part of the shift and subsequent restructurings. Manish Goel, senior vice president and general manager of HP storage, has decided to leave HPE to "pursue other opportunities." He will be replaced by Bill Philbin, a six-year Hewlett-Packard veteran who until this month served as HPE's vice president of data protection, data retention and software-defined storage. Goel joined HPE in March 2015. He previously held positions at NetApp.

Bill Hilf

In August, HPE moved its Helion OpenStack and Helion CloudSystem teams to the HPE Enterprise Group, as part of a newly created Software-Defined and Cloud Group, to help accelerate the momentum it was seeing across the Helion Cloud service portfolio. As a part of the reorganization, the company said Bill Hilf, senior vice president and general manager for the HPE cloud business, was leaving the company. Hilf left Microsoft, where he was general manager for Windows Azure product management, in mid-2013 to join Hewlett-Packard where he has served as a top cloud business executive.

Robert Vrij

Finally, HPE said that Robert Vrij, managing director of Americas sales, would leave the company by the end of the year. He will be replaced by Jim Merritt, who currently leads HPE's Asia-Pacific and Japan sales. Vrij joined HPE in 2013 from Alcatel-Lucent, where he was executive vice president of worldwide sales and marketing and president of Alcatel-Lucent USA from 2008 to 2013.

Dan Rogers

Symantec lost Chief Marketing Officer Dan Rogers, a departure that likely marks one of many from the security vendor as it integrates its executive lineup with newly acquired Blue Coat Systems. Rogers left the Mountain View, Calif.-based company to become chief marketing officer at ServiceNow. He has been replaced at Symantec by Michael Williams, who served as senior vice president of marketing at Blue Coat and will now serve as CMO of Symantec. Rogers had been with Symantec for less than a year, joining the company in September 2015 to oversee its marketing efforts and demand generation. Prior to Symantec, Rogers had a long career in marketing executive positions, most recently at Salesforce as vice president of marketing for EMEA. He has also held positions at Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Kurt Mills

Another departure from the Symantec-Blue Coat acquisition this month was Blue Coat channel chief Kurt Mills. Mills left Symantec to take a role as vice president of worldwide channel sales and operations at FireMon, according to his LinkedIn profile. Mills had led Blue Coat's channel operations as vice president of worldwide channel sales and operations since January 2015. A channel veteran, Mills joined Blue Coat from Aerohive Networks, where he was vice president of channel sales from 2013 to 2015. He also held channel leadership roles at Websense and McAfee.

Paul Bay

Ingram Micro gave two of its top executive additional responsibilities last month, a move that helps the distributor better align its leadership team by geography, the company said. Paul Bay, formerly president of North America, will now serve was group president of the Americas, responsible for overseeing all of the company's North and South American operations. This means that country leaders in Brazil, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Miami Export, Peru and the U.S. will all be reporting to Bay, according to a company spokeswoman at the time. Bay said in a letter to partners that his move, as well as others at the company in August, will allow Ingram Micro to continue "being a large corporation that acts like a small company in order to best serve our partners."

Kirk Robinson

Ingram Micro also said that Kirk Robinson, previously senior vice president and general manager of commercial markets and global sales, will now assume additional responsibilities for all U.S. go-to-market functions and take the title of senior vice president of go-to-market. Partners at the time praised Robinson's new role, saying he is "beloved" by the channel and deserves to be promoted.

Luanne Tierney

Former Proofpoint Senior Vice President of Marketing Luanne Tierney jumped this month to join next-generation solution provider Fivesky as managing partner and co-owner. Tierney joins the company as it looks to vastly expand its business, including the opening of a new office in the San Francisco Bay region, where Tierney will oversee all end-to-end sales and market efforts for the region. Tierney had been head of marketing at Proofpoint since June of last year. Prior to that, she held a series of executive marketing roles at Fortinet, Juniper and Cisco.

Paul Christensen

Logicalis, No. 30 on the 2016 CRN Solution Provider 500, said on Aug. 31 that it had hired Paul Christensen to spearhead its growing North American financial services practice. Christensen is an industry veteran, with experience providing financial services to Avaya and EMC clients. He will serve as North American director for Logicalis Financial Services, the company said, driving a push by the solution provider to boost its financial services team as it looks to customize offers for clients interested in adopting cloud, managed service and as-a-service business models. Christensen spent the past 18 months as managing director of New York-based GSG Financial.

Mark Bermingham

SnoopWall, a Nashua, N.H.-based security company, said in August that it had hired former Kaspersky Lab executive Mark Bermingham as its new channel chief. Bermingham will now serve as vice president of worldwide channels for the company. He had previously held a global senior marketing leadership role at Kaspersky.

"Mark brings two decades of channel, sales, marketing, product management and cybersecurity experience — his past success really speaks for itself," said Gary S. Miliefsky, SnoopWall's president and CEO, in a statement at the time. "Mark is an incredibly talented and passionate executive and channel partner leader who is well suited to grow our 100 percent channel-driven PartnersFirst program across the globe."

John Karnes

Alert Logic, a Houston-based security-as-a-service vendor, announced three new executive hires on Aug. 24, as the company looks to expand its global growth initiatives. The company hired John Karnes as chief financial officer. Karnes has served as CFO for Mariner Energy, KiOR, Houston Exploration and CyberCash, with particular experience in helping rapidly grow companies.

"John has held a variety of roles over his more than 30-year career in both public and private companies and he will be critical in helping Alert Logic scale its operations and continue to grow our business," said Gray Hall, CEO of Alert Logic, in a statement at the time. "He's a hands-on transactional leader with critical public company experience."

John Carse

Alert Logic also hired John Carse as vice president of security operations from JP Morgan Chase, where he served as vice president of global cybersecurity engineering. Carse will be responsible for leading the security vendor's global security and compliance teams, the company said. He has also held roles at CSC, ITT Exelis, FlowBridge and IBM.

Bob Layton

Finally, Alert Logic hired Bob Layton as vice president of global channels, responsible for helping to continue the company's growth through channels. Layton comes to Alert Logic from Pluribus Networks, where he was vice president of sales and channels for the Americas and Europe. At Pluribus, Layton helped develop the company's sales and channel organizations. He has also held roles at solution provider Lumenate, Cisco, Xerox and Thomson Reuters.

Neil Manna

On Aug. 10, CSC, No. 5 on the 2016 CRN SP500, announced the appointment of Neil Manna as vice president, controller and principal accounting officer. Manna joins CSC from CA Technologies, where he served as senior vice president, chief accounting officer and principal accounting officer since 2008. Manna has also held financial leadership positions at RealNetworks, Time+Plus Payroll Services, Intuit and CHI Energy.

Luanne Dauber

Confluent, developer of a system for managing streaming big data, made a series of executive moves this month as the company expands its channel efforts and experiences overall growth. One of those moves was the appointment of Luanne Dauber as chief marketing officer. Dauber joined the startup from Pure Storage where she was marketing vice president and was responsible for field and channel marketing. She has also held roles at Altera.

Todd Barnett

Confluent also announced the hiring in August of Todd Barnett as worldwide sales vice president. Barnett came from open-source software company Acquia where he was vice president of Americas sales. He has also held roles at Emerson Network Power, Aperture and more.

Cheryl Dalrymple

Finally, Confluent also recently hired Cheryl Dalrymple as its chief financial officer. Dalrymple previously served as CFO for a number of venture-backed companies, including Polyvore and AdMob, as well as CFO at online information giant LexisNexis.

Fadi Moubarak

Avaya announced right before the beginning of August that it had appointed Fadi Moubarak as channel chief for its Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa businesses. His official title is Channel Leader for Avaya International. Moubarak will be responsible for the communications company's channel strategy around digital transformation for the enterprise and midmarket sectors. Moubarak has been with Avaya since 2013. Prior to that he was at Cisco, where he served most recently as as general manager of the Levant region.

"Fadi's deep understanding of the channel community priorities and the regional business environment has been a strong driver of Avaya's success in the MENA region. I am confident that he will continue to help drive our go-to-market strategy, and achieve equal and greater success in this new role covering a wider and more diverse region," Nidal Abou-Ltaif, president, Avaya International, said in a statement at the time.

Paula Tolliver

Intel said on Aug. 1 that it had appointed Paula Tolliver as its new corporate vice president and chief information officer. Tolliver comes to Intel from Dow Chemical, where she was CIO and corporate vice president of business services. She was at Dow Chemical since March 2006, according to her LinkedIn profile.

"Paula brings both a depth and breadth of business, technology and strategic acumen that will be a tremendous asset to Intel," CFO Stacy Smith said in a statement at the time. Tolliver will report to Smith in her new role. "We look forward to her leadership of Intel's global IT organization and her contribution to corporate-level strategic initiatives."

Lele Nardin

Palo Alto, Calif.-based data security startup Vera said on Aug. 16 that Lele Nardin would be joining the company as vice president of engineering. Nardin joins Vera from Plumgrid, where he was vice president of engineering, responsible for all product and engineering deployment. He has also held engineering leadership roles at Ericsson Silicon Valley and Cisco. His appointment comes as Vera looks to continue its growth, including the recent addition of $17 million in Series B funding.

"Lele is an engineering visionary with proven success building, scaling and managing high-performance engineering teams," said Prakash Linga, CTO and co-founder of Vera, in a statement at the time. "Vera is building the next-generation platform for securing and sharing any kind of business data, and his experience and guidance will help us accelerate our plan to deliver the most secure, scalable, and usable security solutions in the industry."

Kim Stevenson

Intel also announced this month that former CIO Kim Stevenson would get a new role at the company as chief operating officer for the Client and Internet of Things Businesses and Systems Architecture Group. Stevenson had served as CIO and corporate vice president for five years. She has been replaced by Paula Tolliver.

"Kim strategically aligned IT to Intel's business priorities and established its reputation for excellence and innovation," CFO Stacy Smith said in a statement at the time. "A true business partner and a consummate strategist, her experience running large organizations and working across groups will be a huge asset in her new role."

Lizabeth Zlatkus

CSC announced on August 10 that it had added Lizabeth Zlatkus to its board of directors. Zlatkus is also a non-executive director at Indivior and Boston Private. She also serves as president of LHZ Insights. At CSC she will serve on the company's Audit Committee, the company said at the time.

Paul Brady

Unitrends, a Burlington, Mass.-based business continuity company, said in August that it had named Paul Brady as its CEO. Brady comes to Unitrends from ObserveIT, where he was also CEO. He has also held CEO and other leadership roles at Riverbed Technology, Mazu Networks, Guardent, Exodus, Cohesive Technology Solutions and Business Technologies.

"Unitrends has fabulous products, a great team, and a phenomenal market opportunity," Brady said in a statement about his appointment. "Combined with a strong channel community and top-ranked customer satisfaction, I see all the ingredients for building a great global, cloud-based software company headquartered here in Massachusetts -- something I am very passionate about -- with huge potential for scale across its operations around the world."