30 Notable IT Executive Moves: January 2019
New CEOs At Accenture, Intel And Datto
January started the year with major personnel moves in the IT industry, the most noteworthy among them being the appointment of new CEOs at Intel and Accenture.
Accenture named an interim CEO after its former leader Pierre Nanterme stepped down for health reasons before dying later in the month due to colon cancer. Other companies that saw executive shuffles included VMware, Datto, AMD, Cisco and Oracle.
In the following slides, check out our picks for the 30 most significant executive moves in the tech industry that happened in January 2019.
Pierre Nanterme
Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme, who had led the company since 2011 and had been board chairman since 2013, stepped down from both roles, citing health problems, before he died from colon cancer on Jan. 31.
In July 2016, Nanterme revealed he was battling colon cancer and had undergone surgery but stated he was recovering and still leading the company's day-to-day operations. That changed with the early January announcement that he would step aside. In his place, Accenture named CFO David Rowland, a 35-year company veteran, as interim CEO.
As part of the announcement, lead independent director Marge Magner was named the company's non-executive chair of the board. The company also appointed KC McClure, who currently leads Accenture's finance operations, as chief financial officer.
Bob Swan
Intel named interim leader Bob Swan as its permanent CEO, making him the seventh person to lead the company in its 50-year history. Swan was named interim CEO last June following the sudden resignation of Brian Krzanich.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said Swan, who joined Intel as CFO in 2016, was also elected to the company's board of directors. Todd Underwood, Intel's vice president of finance, has been appointed interim CFO while the company searches for a permanent successor.
Prior to joining Intel in 2016, Swan was an operating partner at growth equity firm General Atlantic. Previously, he was CFO at eBay for more than nine years. He has served as CFO at other companies, including GE Lighting. He also once served as CEO of online grocery startup Webvan, which shut down during the dot-com crash.
Meg Whitman
Former Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman, who worked closely with current HPE CEO Antonio Neri to develop the company's intelligent edge-hybrid IT strategy, stepped down from the company's board of directors.
Whitman, who served as CEO of Hewlett Packard from 2011 to 2015 and HPE from 2015 to 2018, is widely credited by partners with saving the legendary Silicon Valley company, which had $12.5 billion in debt and a demoralized partner network when she took over as CEO in September 2011.
HPE said Whitman, who took a position last March as CEO of Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg's mobile media startup Quibi, will not stand for re-election to the HPE board of directors "as her other professional commitments grow." Whitman's departure from the board comes on Neri's one-year anniversary as CEO.
Diane Bryant
Broadcom appointed former Intel and Google Cloud executive Diane Bryant as an independent director to the company's board of directors.
Bryant was most recently COO of Google Cloud, a job she held for only seven months after reportedly clashing with the company's CEO at the time, Diane Greene, multiple times. Prior to that, Bryant spent more than 14 years at Intel, serving in various roles such as corporate vice president, CIO and general manager of the company's data center division.
Bryant was reportedly in the running to become Intel's next CEO after former leader Brian Krzanich suddenly resigned last June. The role ended up going to Bob Swan, Intel's CFO who had been serving as the company's acting CEO following Krzanich's departure.
Sandeep Chennakeshu
AMD hired Sandeep Chennakeshu as vice president of computing and graphics — a role that will put him in charge of the company's high-performance PC, gaming and semi-custom businesses.
Chennakeshu was most recently president of Blackberry Technology Solutions at Blackberry. Prior to that, he served in senior engineering and executive roles at Ericsson, Freescale and Sony.
His appointment was made as part of other senior leadership changes. Darren Grasby, who oversaw worldwide sales for PC manufacturers and channel partners, was promoted to senior vice president and chief sales officer. Forrest Norrod, the company's senior vice president general manager of the Datacenter and Embedded Solutions Group, had his purview expanded to all data center products across both CPUs and GPUs. Mark Papermaster, AMD's CTO, was promoted to executive vice president.
Aicha Evans
Intel veteran Aicha Evans was named CEO of Zoox Inc., an autonomous vehicle startup based in Foster City, Calif. whose previous leader, co-founder Tim Kentley-Klay, was ousted by the company's board.
Evans was most recently chief strategy officer at Intel, where she worked for 12 years and served in various leadership roles, including as head of Intel's communications and device group. She joined Intel in 2006 as a software integration and test manager.
During her time as chief strategy officer, Evans led the company's long-term strategy efforts, including its push into autonomous vehicles with Intel's acquisition of Mobileye.
Frank Rauch
Frank Rauch, who had headed up the Americas channel for VMware for the last six years, took a new position as the worldwide head of channel sales for Check Point Software Technologies, sources told CRN.
Rauch, a perennial honoree on CRN's annual Most Influential Channel Chiefs list, is expected to drive significant new channel investments at the cybersecurity powerhouse. Rauch, who could not be reached for comment, will report to Chief Customer Officer Dan Yerushalmi, who joined Check Point five months ago.
Solution providers, for their part, said Rauch will likely bring the same formula that served him well at VMware, namely combining new channel programs and tools with strategic teaming agreements, to Check Point.
Tim Weller
Datto appointed Tim Weller as its new CEO to replace founder Austin McChord, who in October 2018 said he was stepping down from that role.
Weller joined Norwalk, Conn.-based Datto in mid-2017 as CFO and was then promoted to company president and chief operating officer. He takes over as the MSP-focused storage and operations platform developer is seeing strong growth organically and via key acquisitions including the late 2017 acquisition of professional services automation platform provider Autotask.
In his new role, Weller will combine the functions of CEO and president. McChord still remains on Datto's board of directors and will advise Weller.
Brad Rinklin
Carbon Black appointed Akamai veteran Brad Rinklin as chief marketing officer.
Rinklin was most recently CMO of Eze Software, an investment software provider. Prior to that, he held multiple executive roles at Akamai, including as CMO and senior vice president of global alliances. Rinklin will be working from Carbon Black's headquarters in Waltham, Mass.
"Brad’s wealth of experience in B2B marketing is a major asset for Carbon Black,” Carbon Black COO Thomas Hansen said in a statement. “When you look at what makes a great CMO, there should be a natural cohesion of technical understanding, deep awareness of the market’s needs and the ability to deliver a compelling and impactful message. Brad brings all of these abilities to the table, and more, as well as keen understanding of cybersecurity challenges from his time at Akamai.”
Martin Roesch
Martin Roesch, founder and CTO of Sourcefire, is leaving Cisco Systems after five years as chief architect of the company’s Security Business Group.
Cisco bought Sourcefire, a provider of network security hardware and software, in October 2013 for $2.7 billion to round out its advanced threat protection portfolio. Roesch had been leading Cisco's Cybersecurity team since the close of the deal said he's now ready to move on.
Prior to starting Sourcefire, Roesch created Snort in 1998, a free, open-source network intrusion detection system and intrusion prevention system. Snort became one of the most popular intrusion detection software systems in the world in less than two years after its inception, according to Roesch. The tech entrepreneur then decided to build a company around his popular security software and founded Sourcefire in 2001 with a team of three employees.
Bill Swales
Bill Swales, who ran North American channels for Oracle, left the company in December for a new position at VMware.
In his three-and-a-half-year tenure as channel chief for the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based software giant, Swales presided over a massive shift of Oracle's partner ecosystem to a focus on selling cloud services.
He will be replaced by 25-year Oracle veteran Dale Weideling, sources told CRN. Weideling's current official position is vice president of partner management, where he develops channel strategy and programs.
Jonathan Rosenberg
Jonathan Rosenberg, Cisco's former vice president and collaboration business unit CTO, landed a job at cloud contact center provider Five9 after saying he would leave Cisco last September.
In his new role, Rosenberg joins Five9’s C-suite and will also lead the company’s artificial intelligence business unit, according to the San Ramon, Calif.-based provider.
The move reunites Rosenberg with his former boss, Rowan Trollope, who served as leader of Cisco's collaboration unit and Internet of Things business for nearly six years and left Cisco in May to join Five9 as CEO.
Rosenburg, who has spent the last five years as one of the leaders of Cisco's collaboration business unit, is no tech newbie. The executive served as general manager of product and strategy for Microsoft, and chief technology strategist for Skype prior to Microsoft acquiring the company in 2011. Rosenberg is also well known for co-authoring the SIP protocol, the foundation for modern IP-based telecommunications.
Frank Vella
Business analytics and data management software developer Information Builders has promoted chief operating officer Frank Vella to CEO, taking over for founder and long-time CEO Gerald Cohen.
Cohen will remain as chairman of the privately held company's board and serve as a senior advisor to Vella. Vella, who was hired as COO in November 2017, assumes responsibility for the management and operations of all aspects of the New York-based company.
Before joining IBI Vella was chief revenue officer at BlueJeans Network, a provider of cloud-based video conferencing services, according to his LinkedIn profile. Earlier he was vice president of worldwide sales at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Software, chief operating officer at Virtustream and a global sales vice president at Quest Software.
Guido Appenzeller
Guido Appenzeller, CTO of VMware's cloud and networking business, departed the company to join Yubico as chief product officer, where he will focus on product development and strategy for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based provider of hardware authentication devices.
Appenzeller joined VMware in 2014 after serving as co-founder and CEO of software-defined networking vendor Big Switch Networks. Prior to that, he managed OpenFlow development as a professor at Stanford University and was previously co-founder and CTO of Voltage Security.
"The short-term opportunity for Yubico is to replace passwords as the main authentication method in the internet. This is a huge shift. It would all but eliminate phishing while actually improving usability," Appenzeller said in a blog post. "But this is just scratching the surface. Having inexpensive hardware with advanced cryptographic functionality opens up new applications for payments, messaging security, IoT security and secure infrastructure."
Chetan Chaudhary
Twilio appointed Chetan Chaudhary as the company's new channel chief, taking over from Ron Huddleston, a highly accomplished channel leader for several name-brand tech vendors who died unexpectedly in November at the age of 45.
Chaudhary is no stranger to the channel himself. In his second stint at Cisco Systems, for two years he managed business development efforts through the networking giant's partners. Twilio's new channel chief started his career as an inside sales rep at Oracle between 2001 and 2003, where he first met Huddleston, who also worked at the database leader.
After Cisco, Chaudhary came to Twilio in January of 2012 to lead channel sales and help develop the young cloud company's channel strategy. But a couple years later, he was tapped to run Twilio's IoT and wireless business unit instead before he was named to lead the company's channel efforts.
Lakshmi Hanspal
Box appointed former SAP executive Lakshmi Hanspal as the company's chief information security officer — a role that will put her in charge of the company's cybersecurity practice, security operations and data and platform production efforts.
Hanspal was most recently chief security officer at SAP Ariba. Prior to that, she was the senior leader for information security and risk at PayPal. She previously spent 10 years at Bank of America as a senior vice president. She also advises several Silicon Valley startups.
"In today's world, security threats have become persistent, and compliance and privacy are only getting more complex," she said in a statement. "This coupled with the fact that the nature of work is dramatically changing driven by a new generation of worker with different expectations and cultural norms, makes it imperative that organizations move to secure and compliant cloud services, such as Box, to protect their most critical information."
Rance Poehler
Pivot3 nabbed one of the most experienced IT sales leaders in the business with the hiring of Rance Poehler as its new vice president of global sales and chief revenue officer.
Poehler joins the fast-growing hyper-converged infrastructure and hybrid cloud provider following a two-year stint with Dell as vice president of worldwide sales for its cloud client computing team, an $800 million business that represents Dell’s suite of cloud and desktop virtualization solutions.
Poehler is now responsible for leading Pivot3’s global sales organization, including channel sales, while also executing on the company’s growth and talent acquisition strategy. Prior to Dell, he spent 23 years at Panasonic. During his tenure as president of Panasonic System Communications Company, he led a $1.1 billion business-to-business North American division.
Bill McAlister
Bill McAlister, senior vice preside of sales for the Americas at McAfee, departed the company as it laid off 200 employees across a wide range of departments.
McAlister had been at the Santa Clara, Calif.-based cybersecurity company since 2005, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was previously a divisional vice president at industrial software vendor PTC.
A source speaking to CRN characterized him as a people person who excels at working with customers and internal employees in a humble and straightforward manner and without any hidden agenda. However, the source said McAfee decided to shuffle its sales management team after McAlister failed to hit his numbers last year. McAlister did not respond to requests for comment.
Pete Peterson
Pete Peterson, president of Xerox Channels, was forced out among a massive internal reorganization at Xerox that also saw the moving of other high-ranking executives.
Peterson, a former Tech Data executive, had been with Xerox since March 2017. He confirmed his departure and said that given the upheaval during his time with the company, he always viewed his role there as temporary, so he tried to find the right talent and organize his team as best he could.
Peterson said in the week since he officially left the company that he’s received calls and job offers. He said he plans to launch a consulting company – Navion Solutions Group – later this month.
Jason Magee
ConnectWise named company veteran Jason Magee as president and appointed another executive to the new role of customer success officer that CEO Arnie Bellini said shows the company is "doubling down" on partner success.
In his new role, Magee will oversee products, customer success and IT Nation teams. Prior to his appointment Magee, who joined ConnectWise in 2011, was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Before that he was ConnectWise’s vice president of worldwide channel and alliance. He has worked his entire 20-year career in the channel.
In other moves, Craig Fulton, who had been chief product officer, was put into to the newly created position of chief customer success officer. Bellini said this new role was created in response to overwhelmingly positive feedback the company received on empowering customers to grow their business and exceed their goals.
Karen Freitag
SD-WAN specialist Aryaka announced the appointment of three C-level executives: Karen Freitag as chief revenue officer, Michelle Owczarzak as chief transformation officer, and Shashi Kiran as the company's new chief marketing officer.
Aryaka began refreshing its leadership team last year. In September, the company appointed Matt Carter as CEO. He formerly was president and CEO of networking and communications provider Inteliquent. The company also brought on enterprise software veteran Deepak Kumar as senior vice president of customer success in December.
Freitag, a Rivada Networks and Sprint veteran, is taking over from former CRO Mike Hoffman, who is now at Yotascale. Meanwhile, Owczarzak is taking a new role after serving as an executive at Inteliquent. Kiran previously worked at Appcito and Cisco Systems.
Marcus Brown
Digital Guardian global channel chief Marcus Brown left the company, marking another high-profile departure from the data protection vendor in recent months.
Brown spent nearly seven years at Digital Guardian, launching the industry's first data loss prevention managed security service and helping the Waltham, Mass.-based cybersecurity vendor increase channel revenue to 75 percent of global new business in 2017. He served as the company's vice president of corporate business development for five years before transitioning into the global channel chief role in early 2017.
Brown joined Palo Alto Networks in early 2019 as director of business development, according to his LinkedIn profile.
John Norton
Former Arrow executive John Norton was appointed chief revenue officer of Calabrio, a Minneapolis-based customer engagement and analytics software vendor.
Norton was most recently senior vice president of growth at global IT services provider ConvergeOne. Prior to that, he served in multiple leadership roles at Arrow's systems integration business, which ConvergeOne acquired in 2017.
“I have known John for many years through his work in our ecosystem, and I have long been impressed with his passion for results and ability to motivate teams," Tom Goodmanson, president and CEO at Calabrio, said in a statement. "He knows our business and what it takes to make customers successful — this is a great fit as we gear up for another year of aggressive growth and opportunity in 2019.”
Steve Pataky
SonicWall sales and channel leader Steve Pataky is departing this spring after guiding the company through its spinoff from Dell and pushing its capabilities upmarket.
The Milpitas, Calif.-based company said Pataky will be replaced by Bob VanKirk, who has spent nearly two years spearheading SonicWall's efforts in key verticals, the U.S. federal government, and with key strategic partners. Pataky joined the company in early 2016 back when it was still part of Dell and plans to remain with the company through April to assist with the transition.
Pataky helped SonicWall generate some $700 million in deal registration and grow its partner program to more than 17,600 solution providers after separating from Dell in November 2016. He joined SonicWall after driving stratospheric growth at FireEye, and has been a regular on CRN's annual Most Influential Channel Chiefs and Top Sales Leaders lists.
Eric Kohl
Ingram Micro promoted Eric Kohl to vice president and expanded his role to put him in charge of the distributor's emerging vendor initiative and Cloud Harmonics business in addition to its U.S. security organization.
"Under Kohl's leadership, Ingram Micro’s security business has grown to stand out as an indispensable partner to our channel partners and the go-to-market partner of choice for emerging and established cybersecurity vendors," according to Tim Ament, senior vice president of advanced solutions at Ingram Micro.
Kohl has been at Ingram Micro for more than 20 years, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Michael Urban
Synnex hired Michael Urban executive from rival Tech Data to head its worldwide business.
Fremont, Calif.-based distributor Synnex on Thursday said it has appointed Urban as its new president of worldwide technology solutions distribution, where he will report to Synnex President and CEO Dennis Polk.
Urban officially started at Synnex in February after a nearly six-and-a-half stint at rival distributor Tech Data where, during his last two years, he served as corporate senior vice president of strategy, transformation, and global vendor management.
Jason Bystrak
D&H Distributing appointed Axcient and Ingram Micro veteran Jason Bystrak as vice president of the company's cloud business unit.
Most recently, Bystrak was vice president of worldwide channels and distribution at Axicent. Prior to that, he spent more than 22 years at Ingram Micro, where he served in multiple leadership roles, including as global executive director for the company's partner enablement program.
"We're thrilled to welcome Jason Bystrak into the fold at D&H Distributing. His considerable skills and proven business acumen in the areas of cloud and managed services will add a new dynamic to our cloud strategy," D&H's Peter DiMarco said in a statement. "We look forward to working together to accelerate the growth of D&H's cloud offering, creating an evolving menu of resources for resellers who want to pursue a profitable hosted services model."
David Powell
Channel guru David Powell, general manager of the service provider business for SaaS performance monitoring provider LogicMonitor, is taking a new job as chief revenue officer for Corsica Technologies, a next-generation, private-equity-backed managed service provider.
Powell, who has received wide acclaim over his 21-year career for his ability to navigate fast-moving technology and business model changes, said the opportunity to lead a buildout of a next-generation MSP focused on secondary markets was too much to pass up even with LogicMonitor coming off its best quarter ever for MSP sales.
Prior to his time at LogicMonitor, Powell was vice president of managed and cloud services at TekLinks. Before then, he worked at Claris Networks and Evolution Technology Group.
Janet Schijns
Janet Schijns departed Office Depot as the company's executive vice president and chief services officer after working there for less than two years, according to a report.
Schijns joined Office Depot in 2017 ahead of the company's $1 billion acquisition of IT services provider CompuCom. Prior to that, Schijns was chief channel executive for Verizon Enterprise Solutions, where she worked for more than five years.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Schijns has returned to her consulting firm, JS Group, as its CEO, where she advises on digital transformation and go-to-market strategies, among other things.
Robert Westervelt
GTT Communications promoted telecom pro Robert Westervelt to channel chief, and the longtime tech executive believes that the channel is a significant growth opportunity for the enterprise communications provider.
Westervelt, now senior vice president for channel sales for GTT's Americas division, has served as GTT's vice president for channel sales for its East region since 2017. His vision is to continue to aggressively grow GTT's organic revenue via the company's indirect channel.
Westervelt has more than 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry and has done his fair share of managing channel relationships. Prior to his appointment with GTT in 2017, Westervelt served as vice president and general manager of global solutions for NTT America, senior vice president of indirect sales for Broadview Networks, as well as holding several positions at XO Communications, including president of alternate channels.