30 Notable IT Executive Moves: June 2017

Start It Off

Leading off this past month's list of major executive changes in the IT industry is a big promotion at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Meanwhile, IBM saw the departure of its channel chief in June and the naming of a successor in the role. Other companies with notable executive comings and goings during the month included CenturyLink, SonicWall, Optiv, Tanium and Cylance.

In the following slides, check out our picks for the 30 most significant executive moves affecting the channel in June.

Antonio Neri

The principal architect of Hewlett Packard Enterprise's software-defined hybrid IT buildout, Antonio Neri, has been promoted to president of the $28 billion company from his role as executive vice president.

Neri, also the driving force behind HPE's recent acquisitions of SimpliVity and Nimble, will oversee a new "HPE Next" growth and profitability initiative aimed at streamlining and optimizing the company. A 22-year veteran of the company, Neri had worked in every major part of the legacy HP business--from PCs to printers to services—to now overseeing the mainstay enterprise business.

In announcing the promotion of Neri, HPE CEO Meg Whitman noted that he has led some of the most important business initiatives at company. "From overseeing the reinvention of our Technology Services business and the divestiture of our H3C business in China, to the integration of critical acquisitions like Aruba, SGI, SimpliVity and Nimble, Antonio has been invaluable to me as we have worked to establish the new Hewlett Packard Enterprise," said Whitman. "His promotion reflects the importance of his contributions to the company as leader of the Enterprise Group, which represents more than 80 percent of the go-forward company’s revenue."

Marc Dupaquier

IBM's popular channel chief, Marc Dupaquier, departed after 33 years with the technology giant, including the last four leading Big Blue's vast ecosystem of global channel partners and distributors.

Dupaquier said he is retiring as IBM's general manager of global business partners to work with startups, in what he'll only describe as a "different kind of IT project" that's a "passion" he's been working on pro bono in recent months.

Dupaquier's biggest achievement as IBM channel chief was pulling together the disparate channel initiatives and programs scattered across IBM's hardware, software and service product groups under the IBM PartnerWorld umbrella, said Mark Wyllie, CEO of Flagship Solutions Group, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based solution provider and IBM channel partner. "The 'one channel' was long overdue," Wyllie said of Dupaquier's accomplishment. "It was a challenge to get that done, to get most people on the same page."

IBM veteran John Teltsch will replace Dupaquier.

John Teltsch

Following the departure of IBM channel chief Marc Dupaquier, John Teltsch has succeeded Dupaquier in the role, officially the general manager of global business partners at IBM. Teltsch moves over from his role as general manager for transformation, global markets at IBM.

Teltsch has held many sales leadership roles across IBM divisions in his 36-year career with the company, including 25 years in the systems or software groups, where the channel has been a major factor in go-to-market strategy. He previously led IBM's Latin America organization and worked a few years in Spain running European software sales. Teltsch also ran sales for the Global Systems x group, an 80 percent channel business, before its divestiture to Lenovo.

In addition, IBM disclosed that Dorothy Copeland, previously a channel leader for Amazon Web Services, has joined IBM as vice president of business partners for North America. Copeland takes the position vacated by Michele Stern in February.

Anirban Chakravartti

As Optiv Security preps for its pivot to the global market, the company said it has appointed top-level security executives from Symantec, SecureWorks and D&H to lead three of its key business initiatives.

Denver-based Optiv announced said it had added Anirban Chakravartti as senior vice president, worldwide partner solutions, responsible for leading the security solution provider's partner strategy. Chakravartti comes to Optiv from Symantec, where he was global head of strategic partners. He has also held senior leadership positions at Cisco, AMD and HP.

Optiv also added former Equifax CISO and Dell SecureWorks CSO Doug Steelman to lead the company's managed services push as vice president, managed security services. Before SecureWorks, Steelman held a variety of positions at the Department of Defense, including cyber command director and director of DoD network defense.

Finally, Optiv announced it had added Michael Lines as vice president, strategy, risk and compliance advisory services. Lines comes to Optiv from D&H, where he was chief information security officer. He has also held top security leadership roles at PWC and TransUnion.

Glen Post

CenturyLink said that CEO Glen Post, who has led the company for the past 25 years, will be stepping down. Level 3 Communications' current president and CEO, Jeff Storey, will take the helm of the newly merged company.

When CenturyLink closes its acquisition of Level 3, Storey will join the new company as president and chief operating officer. Post will stay on as CEO after the deal closes until Jan. 1, 2019, after which Post will become executive chairman of the company's board of directors, according to the two companies.

The two companies expect the merger to close by Sept. 30. CenturyLink announced in 2016 that it would buy Broomfield, Colo.-based Level 3 in a cash and stock deal worth $34 billion.

Post has been focused on bolstering network and cloud services and building the carrier's presence in the enterprise space. CenturyLink and Level 3 have emphasized that the combined company would earn 76 percent of its revenue from business customers.

Lisa Miller

CenturyLink has made additional leadership changes that will go into effect once the company completes its planned acquisition of fellow telecom provider Level 3.

Level 3 Senior Vice President of Wholesale and Alternate Channels and Asia Pac Region Lisa Miller has been named president of the new wholesale and indirect business unit for the combined company. CenturyLink told CRN that Miller will be responsible for CenturyLink's channel organization after the merger is complete.

Edward Morche, Level 3's former group vice president and current president of sales for Zayo Group -- a position he started in May -- will be returning to the company on July 5 as president of the strategic enterprise, federal government and state government unit. Laurinda Pang, a current Level 3 executive, who was previously appointed to lead sales, revenue generation, and enterprise service delivery for the company's global accounts, has been named president of global accounts management and international. Heading up the small/midsize business and local government/education unit as president will be CenturyLink executive Vernon Irvin. Maxine Moreau, also a current CenturyLink executive, will remain in her role as president of the consumer business unit of the combined company.

Sandra Crosswell

SonicWall is expanding its executive lineup and security expertise with the appointment of former VMware executive Sandra Crosswell as the company's first chief security officer/chief information security officer.

Crosswell has spent nearly three decades in the IT industry, including in tech support, engineering and management roles. Most recently, she led the InfoSec Red Team at VMware as senior manager, and earlier she spent 17 years in various roles at Hewlett Packard, according to her LinkedIn profile.

At SonicWall, which spun out from former parent company Dell in November, Croswell said she aims to help build up the company's internal and external security strategy.

Mark Wayland

Tanium has added another executive to its lineup, appointing former Salesforce executive Mark Wayland to the newly created role of chief revenue officer. Wayland officially starts at Tanium on July 10.

Wayland joins Tanium after 10 years at Salesforce, most recently as senior vice president of marketing for cloud. He has also held positions at Gartner, Scient and Nortel.

In an interview with CRN, Wayland said he joined the Emeryville, Calif.-based security company because he saw the opportunity to help it grow in the same way he saw Salesforce grow. "[My move] was really about how thrilled I was at the opportunity at Tanium. It really felt like the Salesforce I joined 10 years ago, and it seems like it was too good to pass up," he said.

David Greene

A new CEO started at ZeroStack in June, ready to drive the next phase of growth for the startup that's trying to simplify private cloud deployment through a hyper-converged appliance.

David Greene, who has extensive experience selling enterprise infrastructure, will take the reins of the Mountain View, Calif.-based company from co-founder Ajay Gulati, who will transition to CTO.

Greene previously held the position of chief marketing officer at Aerohive Networks, a wireless networking company that, like ZeroStack, leverages cloud-based software to solve on-premise infrastructure challenges. Before Aerohive, Greene ran marketing and business development for Riverbed.

Jennifer Deutsch

Park Place Technologies announced the additions of Jennifer Deutsch and Grant Stanis as CMO and CFO, respectively. They join Cleveland-based Park Place, No. 208 on the 2017 CRN Solution Provider 500, during a time of rapid growth for the third-party maintenance provider, which has made three acquisitions within the past year.

Deutsch, a marketing veteran with 23 years of client experience and another 10 years as founder and COO of an agency, last served as senior vice president of marketing at Energy Focus, an energy-efficient LED lighting provider.

Stanis comes to Park Place from PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he was a deals practice director and developed particular expertise when it comes to domestic and international mergers and acquisitions.

Howard Ting

As cloud security firm Zscaler reportedly prepares for an initial public offering, the company said that a veteran of Nutanix and Palo Alto Networks, Howard Ting, has joined as the new chief marketing officer of Zscaler.

Ting comes from his position as CMO of Nutanix, a company where he had worked since 2012, including through the hyper-converged infrastructure vendor's IPO this past September. Previously, Ting had served as senior director for corporate marketing at Palo Alto Networks between 2009 and 2012—and was there during Palo Alto Networks' IPO (in July 2012) as well. "Howard has a world-class track record for building great brands at both Nutanix and Palo Alto Networks and we are thrilled he has decided to bring his talents to Zscaler to help fuel our next phase of growth," Zscaler CEO Jay Chaudhry wrote on LinkedIn.

Zscaler has begun the process of seeking underwriters for an IPO that could bring a market valuation for the company as high as $2 billion, The New York Times reported.

Joe Tucci

Venture capital firm 83North announced that Joe Tucci, formerly the longtime CEO of EMC, has joined as a special adviser. In a news release, Tucci said he had "previously worked with the partners at 83North and I believe in their approach to venture investing." Among the VC firm's general partners is Gil Goren, a former EMC executive.

"I am keeping a close eye on the areas they invest in globally, many of which are going through massive inflection points of innovation," Tucci said.

Tucci had joined EMC in 2000 and served as CEO and chairman until September 2016. He departed following the merger between EMC and Dell.

Dave DeWalt

Deception technology firm Illusive Networks has appointed well-known security industry executive Dave DeWalt as vice chairman of its board of directors.

DeWalt is the former CEO of security giants McAfee and FireEye. Since leaving FireEye last year, DeWalt has joined the boards of directors of multiple security startups, including ForgeRock, Claroty and ForeScout Technologies, as well as Israeli cybersecurity think tank and venture creation firm Team8.

In an interview with CRN, DeWalt said wanted to join Illusive Networks because of the company's technology, which he said solves a key problem around attack detection and attribution. "It feels a little bit like FireEye did early on," DeWalt said. "This is the first technology I've seen that really gives us more time to detect [and track attackers for attribution]."

Pat Grillo

Atrion Communication founder Pat Grillo is scaling back his role 33 years after starting the company.

Grillo will remain Atrion's chairman and CEO, but is gradually handing the company's reins over to his son, Dominic Grillo.

Dominic Grillo was promoted June 1 to the president role, where he's responsible for overseeing all of the company's day-to-day operations.

Pat Grillo will continue to be responsible for working a number of major accounts, handling high-level vendor meetings, and setting Atrion's overall, high-level plans.

Nicholas Warner

SentinelOne has landed one of its competitor's top executives, stealing away Cylance head of worldwide sales Nicholas Warner as its new chief revenue officer.

Warner announced the change on his LinkedIn profile, saying he started at the company in June. Warner had previously served as senior vice president of worldwide sales at Cylance, a position he had held since April 2014. Prior to joining Cylance, Warner held top sales roles at Intel Security (now McAfee) and Websense.

Cylance said in a statement to CRN that the company has appointed former Websense Senior Vice President of Americas John Giacomini as the company's new executive vice president of worldwide sales. Giacomini left Websense earlier this year after its merger with Forcepoint.

Marcus Jewell

Juniper Networks has nabbed networking sales executive Marcus Jewell from Brocade Communications to lead its Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) business.

Jewell led Brocade's EMEA business for the past four years as vice president of EMEA, and was also the global head of the company's software sales. Brocade is planning to divest the majority of its business assets to various vendors once Broadcom acquires Brocade for $5.9 billion, which is expected to occur later this summer.

Juniper has hired Jewell as senior vice president and general manager for its EMEA business. He will be responsible for Juniper's sales operations, go-to-market and channel strategies in the region.

Rola Dagher

Cisco has named Rola Dagher, formerly of Dell EMC, as the new president of Cisco Canada. Dagher succeeds Bernadette Wightman, who had held the role since 2014 and "who has successfully completed her contract in Canada and is returning to the U.K.," Cisco said.

Dagher brings a 25-year background in server, storage and networking businesses, Cisco said. She had held various leadership roles in sales, channels and IT at Dell EMC, most recently serving as vice president and general manager of the company's Canadian Infrastructure Solutions Group.

Burney Barker

Gigamon has hired a Dell EMC executive, Burney Barker, to serve as its senior vice president of worldwide sales. Barker will oversee both direct and indirect sales at Gigamon.

His career in sales has spanned 25 years, and he was most recently senior vice president of global sales for the Converged Platforms and Solutions Division at Dell EMC. Barker's tenure at EMC lasted 11 years, and before that he spent seven years at AT&T.

David Meredith

Rackspace has named former CenturyLink executive David Meredith as president of private cloud and managed hosting. The appointment follows the recent appointment of a new CEO at Rackspace, Joe Eazor.

Meredith is taking on some of the responsibilities previously held by former chief operating officer Mark Roenigk, who departed Rackspace in June.

Most recently, Meredith was the president of global data centers at CenturyLink. Earlier, he held roles at companies including Capital One, CGI and VeriSign.

Bryan Rocco

Solution provider giant Softchoice said that finance vet Bryan Rocco has joined the company as its new chief financial officer. Simon Parmar had departed as Softchoice CFO in March, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The appointment of Rocco follows the arrival of Vince De Palma, formerly the head of Shred-It, as Softchoice CEO in February.

Rocco's 15-year career in finance most recently included four years as CFO of Bio Agri Mix LP, and before that he was a vice president at Spin Master.

Todd Helmbrecht

Kaspersky Lab North America has named marketing vet Todd Helmbrecht as senior vice president of marketing. Helmbrecht's career included 15 years in various marketing roles at Bose and a stint as director of channel marketing at Covidien. He was most recently the vice president of marketing for headset maker VXi Corporation.

In addition, Kaspersky Lab North America said it has hired Brian Anderson, formerly of Avid Technology, as vice president of online sales.

Tim Zonca

IT infrastructure automation firm Puppet said it has promoted Tim Zonca to be vice president of worldwide marketing. Zonca, who has been with Puppet since 2014, had previously served as the head of product marketing for the company. Prior to joining Puppet, Zonca was the director of product marketing at Jive Software.

In addition, Puppet said it has appointed Tanya Webb to serve as senior manager of diversity and inclusion, a newly created role at the company. Webb, who joined Puppet in 2012, has been promoted from a role in talent management at the company.

"Tim's expert leadership combined with Tanya's ability to cultivate an inclusive workplace will help fuel our global growth," Puppet CEO Sanjay Mirchandani said in a news release.

Chris Lehman

ExtraHop has named former FireEye executive Chris Lehman as senior vice president of worldwide sales.

Most recently, Lehman had served as vice president of North America sales and channel at FireEye. Earlier, he held roles in global sales, sales engineering and channel leadership at companies such as EMC and Salesforce.

"Chris has a deep knowledge of the security industry that will only enhance the rich IT operations and enterprise networking experience of our sales organization," ExtraHop CEO Arif Kareem said in a news release. "As we continue to expand our offerings across all facets of IT to serve customers where and how they need us most, Chris' perspective will be invaluable."

Kevin Lynch

Cloud service provider Netgain said it has appointed former Volerro CEO Kevin Lynch as its new chief executive. Lynch succeeds Netgain founder Scott Warzecha, who moves from the CEO role to a position as chairman of the company's board.

Lynch's career has included tenure as CEO both of SaaS collaboration provider Volerro and of logistics IT firm Nistevo. Along with serving as CEO of Netgain, Lynch will hold a seat on the company's board of directors.

Sumit Sadana

Micron Technology has named Sumit Sadana, a 26-year veteran of the semiconductor industry, as executive vice president and chief business officer. All four of Micron's business units will report to him, the company said.

Most recently, Sadana was with SanDisk, where he served as executive vice president, chief strategy officer and general manager of Enterprise Solutions. Prior to that, he held executive roles at companies including IBM and Freescale Semiconductor.

Ted Hulsy

Workspace-as-a-Service vendor itopia said that channel marketing and sales veteran Ted Hulsy has joined as chief revenue officer. Along with working with the company's sales and marketing teams, Hulsy will have responsibilities for growing itopia's partner ranks and enhancing the company's partner program.

Most recently, Hulsy had served as vice president of marketing at eFolder, which offers business continuity and cloud file sync SaaS solutions for MSPs, cloud service providers, systems integrators and resellers. Prior to that, Hulsy headed marketing at SonicWall, where he was involved with building the company's partner community.

Cindy Gagliano

MKACyber, a provider of managed security operations services and security consulting, has appointed security and consulting veteran Cindy Gagliano as president.

Previously, Gagliano has held senior positions at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Booz Allen Hamilton.

The appointment came during the same month that MKACyber announced a Series A funding round of $4.1 million.

Bruce Chatterley

Senet, a provider of low-power wide-area networks focused on IoT, has appointed Bruce Chatterley as its new president and CEO. He succeeds the former president and CEO of Senet, George Dannecker, who has retired after four years with the company.

Previous roles for Chatterley have included serving as CEO of Broadvox, as a vice president of Best Buy for the Speakeasy division, and as president for eServices and SME at Concur Technologies.

Ryan Gurney

Big data platform provider Looker has named former Zendesk executive Ryan Gurney as its chief security officer, tasked with helping to scale the company's security programs as the firm grows.

Gurney previously managed security and compliance functions as vice president of security at Zendesk. Prior to that, he served as director of IT for Engine Yard, and earlier, oversaw a security engineering team at eBay.

Edward Kennedy

Telecom software solutions firm CENX has named Edward Kennedy, a 30-year veteran of the telecom industry, as its president and CEO.

Most recently, Kennedy served as president and CEO of Tollgrade Communications from 2010 until April of this year. Earlier, he was CEO of Rivulet Communications and president of North American Operations at Tellabs.

Kennedy provides "the unique industry insight that CENX was looking for in order to further reinforce its leadership position in the telecommunications software market," CENX board chairman Sean Dalton said in a news release.