30 Notable IT Executive Moves: February 2018

Changing Of The Guard

The wheel of change continued to turn in the channel last month, with several vendors shuffling their executive teams and others making new talent additions to their senior leadership stable. Among them: Intel named a CTO for the first time since 2013, VMware saw the departure of a senior channel leader, and storage expert Chad Sakac took a new position under the Dell Technologies umbrella.

Solution providers stayed busy, as well, with Appirio appointing a new chief executive and QTS Realty Trust restructuring its organizational structure to reflect a renewed focus on its hyper-scale and hybrid co-location offerings.

In the following slides, check out our picks for the 30 most significant channel executive moves that took place in February.

Ross Brown

The former VMware channel chief is no longer with the virtualization giant, sources confirmed to CRN last month. Brown's LinkedIn page currently indicates that he is on sabbatical until September.

Brown's departure comes just six months after VMware promoted Brandon Sweeney to senior vice president of worldwide sales and operations. Brown was simultaneously moved into a role focused on cloud, the Internet of Things and other emerging technologies.

Brown, who had been reporting to VMware Chief Operating Officer of Customer Operations Sanjay Poonen, first joined VMware in August 2015 to oversee its channel program. His previous experience includes a channel leadership positions held at Microsoft, Citrix and IBM.

Michael Mayberry

Intel promoted Mayberry from corporate vice president to senior vice president and CTO in response to continued fallout from the Spectre and Meltdown processor security vulnerabilities.

Mayberry, who has been with the chip giant since 1984, fills the CTO position for the first time since Justin Rattner left the company in 2013. The move comes as Intel amps up its focus on security – a push that includes the formation of an internal security group that will be led by Leslie Culbertson.

Mayberry has held leadership positions with Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group, its Components Research division and Intel Labs. He also holds a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of California Berkeley.

In addition, Intel promoted Ann Kelleher to senior vice president of Intel's Technology Manufacturing Group, where she will be responsible for "corporate quality assurance, corporate services, customer fulfillment and supply chain management," the company said.

David Bellini

ConnectWise President and Co-founder David Bellini took an indefinite leave of absence from the company after he was arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking in his Tampa, Fla. Home. The Hillsborough State Attorney's office later dropped drug trafficking charges against Bellini after determining the weight of controlled substances allegedly in his possession was only about 1 gram.

A ConnectWise spokesperson acknowledged to CRN that Bellini was exonerated of drug trafficking charges, but declined to discuss whether he will return to work. Bellini, who had overseen ConnectWise's international business, is the brother of CEO Arnie Bellini.

In David Bellini's absence, ConnectWise has made Greg Lalle vice president of international sales, reporting directly to Arnie Bellini. Rosanna Inturrisi, director of international operations, will join Lalle’s team.

Chris Barbin

The founding CEO of Appirio is set to become Global Culture Officer at Wipro, the solution provider's parent company, little more than a year after the Bangalore, India-based services giant purchased his company for $500 million.

Taking over for Barbin is Appirio's global general manager of CRM, Erik Duffield, who has been with the Salesforce superstar for the past five years. He will transition to the new role effective April 1.

"I have said many times that the heart of Appirio -- and our main differentiator -- has always been our culture… It’s this personal and professional passion for culture that makes me so excited to take on this new role within Wipro," Barbin wrote in a blog post.

Chad Sakac

Longtime EMC storage guru Chad Sakac is moving into a new role within the Dell Technologies family of companies after Dell EMC restructured its Converged Platforms and Solutions Division last month, moving its hyper-converged and converged infrastructure teams into the core server and storage business units.

Sakac, who had been president of that division since January 2016, will now focus on enhancing integrations around the Pivotal Container Service and Pivotal Cloud Foundation. Sakac eventually hopes to be the CEO of his own company, he wrote in a recent blog post, but for now has chosen to work with a smaller team.

"I will make sure that Pivotal, VMware and Dell EMC work hand in hand from how we work in the market, and how we bend the road maps to be aligned – and deliver on the dream for hundreds and then thousands, and then tens of thousands of customers and partners," Sakac wrote.

Kerry Bailey

eSentire has landed former HPE channel chief Kerry Bailey as its next CEO. The security vendor hopes to reach the $1 billion sales mark in the next three to four years and, as part of that push, wants to double the amount of business it does through the channel.

Bailey spent about 18 months as HPE's senior vice president of worldwide indirect sales, and served as senior vice president of HP Cloud before that. He also worked at Verizon Business for more than five years and led its Terremark subsidiary as president and CEO.

Under Bailey, eSentire's channel push will center around the recruitment of 25 "super VARs" – solution providers with security capabilities, at least $50 million in sales and more than half of their revenue coming from services.

Robert Vrij

Renowned channel champion Robert Vrij, formerly the senior vice president and managing director at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is set to join Lenovo as senior vice president and president of Europe, Middle East and Africa.

On top of running the EMEA business, Vrij will be tasked with strengthening channel relationships with key Lenovo partners such as CDW, Insight, Ingram Micro and Tech Data, sources told CRN. He had previously been in charge of leading HPE's enterprise EMEA sales as well as coordinating business strategies before leaving the vendor in late 2016.

"He'll be able to build programs that will comprehensively deliver products into the market and improve the overall operations of [Lenovo's] go-to-market model," Tech Data Chairman and CEO Bob Dutkowsky said.

Michael Kay

Veriflow has named Kay vice president of business development as the network verification and intelligence vendor looks to grow its new partner program around a select group of channel partners.

An IT industry veteran, Kay spent six years in Cisco's Global Strategic Alliances group and another seven as a sales manager at Brocade. He went on to hold leadership positions at Force10 Networks, Procera Networks, layerX Technologies and Ixia.

Kay, who will be the top channel executive at Veriflow, said the program will likely recruit 100 partners or fewer. Within that group, a small handful of top partners will have the opportunity to design customized business plans and incentive structures.

Phil Davis

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is creating a new Hybrid IT Business Unit, which will be led in the interim by Chief Sales Officer Phil Davis as the vendor searches for a permanent president. HPE CEO Antonio Neri said Davis' "customer-centric and partner-focused" outlook made him an ideal choice to lead the group at launch.

"This new organization will be focused on the services-led and software-enabled infrastructure and solutions we need to deliver on our promise of making Hybrid IT simple," Neri wrote in an internal memo obtained by CRN.

In a separate move, Neri named HPE Aruba senior vice president Keerti Melkote as president of the Intelligent Edge Business Unit. Melkote was the co-founder of HPE's fast-growing Aruba business and has been a driving force behind its software innovation.

Kane Lightowler

Carbon Black landed a new Americas sales leader last month, with the endpoint security vendor naming Lightowler as vice president of Americas Field Sales.

Lightowler, who oversaw the company's Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) business for the past two-plus years, told CRN that he plans to drive channel partner attention toward the Carbon Black predictive security cloud as well as its VMware partnership.

Lightowler will report into Chief Revenue Officer Thomas Hansen, who joined Carbon Black from Dropbox in July, and work alongside recently hired global channel chief Victor Gureghian Baez, a six-year Microsoft veteran.

Dan Bennewitz, Jim Reinhart

QTS Realty Trust announced a pair of senior executive changes as the solution provider aims to simplify its product portfolio and refocus its go-to-market strategy around the data center.

Bennewitz, COO of sales and marketing, is set to retire at some point in 2018 after nearly six years at the company. In addition, COO of Operations Jim Reinhart will be transitioning out of the organization.

As a result, David Robey will take the title of COO, and CTO John Greaves will assume more leadership responsibility around QTS' hybrid co-location business. The company has also begun searching for a chief revenue officer, who would be responsible for hybrid co-location sales and marketing.

Todd Mitchell

The IT industry veteran was named chief operating officer at Dataprise as the solution provider looks to evolve from a regionally dominant company into a national managed services player.

Mitchell holds more than 18 years of experience guiding IT businesses through various growth stages, most recently serving as vice president of strategy and operations at Rackspace. There, he helped the managed cloud vendor grow its VMware business from $550 million to $700 million in a two-year span and drove single-digit growth in its previously flat managed hosting business.

Prior to Rackspace, Mitchell spent three years as general manager of ThePlanet.com Internet Services and, before that, drove $5 million in organic revenue growth as president and COO of Site5 Internet Solutions.

Frank Wiacek

Wiacek has taken over as president of Red8 after outgoing predecessor Richard Heard became president of the solution provider's parent company, Insight Investments.

Prior to joining Red8, Wiacek served as chief revenue officer of a behavioral health organization for the past two years after several years of executive roles at EMC and at Berkshire Computer, a Boston-based solution provider.

Wiacek told CRN he wants to continue driving growth for Red8 along three paths: addressing more projects and plans with customers, increasing the company headcount, and pursuing acquisitions that make sense geographically or culturally.

Christopher Sullivan

Hybrid cloud automation provider Turbonomic added Sullivan to its executive team last month in a bid to further bolster its channel muscle, making the sales veteran its senior vice president of global alliances and channels.

The hiring comes on the heels of the company landing former Microsoft executive Jennifer Heard as channel chief. With Sullivan's arrival, Heard will now purely focus on cloud as senior vice president of cloud partnerships.

Sullivan joins Turbonomic after a two-year stint as senior vice president of global channels and alliances at Hortonworks. Prior to that, he spent about five years at VCE, where he led regional and global sales and channel teams between 2010 and 2015.

Eric Grotefeld

Grotefeld was named chief revenue officer at mobile security vendor Zimperium, which is hoping to broaden its channel coverage and boost its level of marketing support for partners.

Grotefeld most recently served as a senior vice president at CA Technologies, where he spent two and a half years leading the strategic DevOps business unit globally. He also acted as Oracle's EMEA vice president for two-plus years after the vendor purchased his previous employer, BEA Systems; Grotefeld led the integration of BEA's Business Interaction Division into Oracle post-acquisition.

Zimperium wants Grotefeld to help boost its involvement with the systems integrator channel and strengthen its performance and empowerment platform for partners, he said.

Patrick McCue, Monty Gray

Enterprise security vendor Okta picked up a new global channel chief and corporate development leader last month with the additions of McCue (pictured) and Gray, respectively.

McCue, formerly channel chief at Gigya, will be in charge of forging new partnerships in key verticals and geographies as senior vice president of worldwide partners. Gray will oversee partner strategy and execution across the Okta Integration Network (OIN) as senior vice president of corporate development.

The hires come less than a year after San Francisco-based Okta raised $187 million through an IPO valuing the company at $1.5 billion.

Curtis Hutcheson

Threat-hunting security startup Infocyte tapped Hutcheson as its next CEO amid a push to double the company's headcount and partner base within the next year.

A well-traveled tech industry exec, Hutcheson has held key leadership positions during stops at Hewlett-Packard (13-plus years), BMC Software (two years), Dell Enterprise Solutions (two years) and Dell's $550 million Security Software Business Unit, where he oversaw the SonicWall and One Identity practices.

Infocyte has grown its channel community from just 10 solution providers a year ago to 54 partners today as the company's products gain traction in the market, according to co-founder and Chief Product Officer Chris Gerritz.

Ron Huddleston

Huddleston was named Chief Partner Officer at communications, API and SaaS provider Twilio last month as the vendor looks to drive more channel business and grow its overall partner community.

Huddleston's last stop came at Microsoft, where he had served as corporate vice president of the computing giant's One Commercial Partner organization since June 2016. He took an indefinite leave of absence from the role in December, citing family reasons.

Before joining Microsoft, Huddleston spent 11 years at Oracle and another eight years at Salesforce, most recently as senior vice president of its IoT Cloud business.

Leonard Iventosch

Scalable file system startup Qumulo landed a longtime storage space veteran with the hiring of Iventosch as the leader of its first formal channel program.

HPE's former vice president of worldwide channels left the company in October, less than a year after it first announced plans to acquire Nimble Storage. He also has key channel experience at Isilon, EMC and NetApp.

Prior to joining Qumulo, Iventosch worked with the company for three or four years in an advisory role before agreeing to take a more strategic role at the company, he said. He also worked closely with many of Qumulo's executives during his time at Isilon.

Mike Trojecki

Longtime ePlus executive Mike Trojecki is leaving his post as vice president of digital infrastructure and IoT to pursue other opportunities, according to his LinkedIn page.

Trojecki spent eight years at the solution provider, holding a variety of responsibilities and titles that most notably included National Cisco Practice Director. In that capacity, he spearheaded efforts to develop Cisco solutions and enable ePlus' Cisco sales and engineering teams.

The departure comes less than two months after 12-year ePlus CTO Mark Melvin left the company without any immediate plans to accept a new position.

Greg Silberman

Security vendor Cylance promoted Silberman to Chief Privacy Officer, a role in which he'll be responsible for implementing and enforcing the company's data management privacy practices from both the employee and customer perspectives.

Silberman first joined Cylance in November 2016 as senior director of legal affairs, intellectual property and privacy. Before that, he spent more than two decades as a private practice patent lawyer, rising to the level of partner at Kaye Scholer and later at Jones Day.

"As we build a global security platform and rapidly expand into the future and new global markets, Greg will help ensure our mission to protect every computer, person and device under the sun," Cylance Chief Security and Trust Officer Malcolm Harkins said in a statement.

Pam Cory

BitTitan has appointed Cory to lead all of the vendor's product and channel marketing efforts as its new vice president of marketing.

Cory comes over to BitTitan from Dell EMC, where she had served as Head of Marketing for the Americas since 2015. There, she led strategy and execution, with a focus on big data, IoT and analytics for the IT giant, and was also responsible for joint marketing programs with systems integrators and channel partners.

Prior to Dell EMC, Cory held marketing vice president roles at Intermec, NetMotion Wireless, Serials Solutions and ProQuest.

Allan Tessler, Mike Mooney

Two major leadership changes took place at security vendor Imperva in February: Tessler took over as the company's new chairman of the board, and CRO Mike Mooney resigned "in order to pursue other interests," the company said.

Tessler, a member of the Imperva board since October 2015, has been chairman and CEO of International Financial Group since 1987. He joins Imperva as predecessor Anthony Bettencourt steps down from the board.

Mooney had held the CRO role at Imperva since October 2014. His departure comes about six months after the company named former Citrix Systems executive Christopher Hylen as its new president and CEO.

Kevin Fagan

Government solution provider ManTech hired Fagan as general manager of its Federal Civilian and Health IT business, which is itself part of the company's Missions Solutions and Services Group.

Fagan will be responsible for leading ManTech mission support for Departments of Homeland Security, State, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services in the new role. He joined the company, No. 31 on the 2017 CRN Solution Provider 500, in August as a vice president.

Before ManTech, Fagan held senior leadership positions at NCI Information Systems for more than a decade and spent another 17-plus years at SRA International.

Thomas Watson

SageNet, a network, security and managed services solution provider, named industry veteran Watson as its new chief information officer last month.

Watson has a wide range of technology experience that includes network, infrastructure, security and app development work. He was most recently the director of infrastructure operations at natural gas distribution and processing infrastructure provider Williams Companies.

"He has a strong record of leadership and success in the technology industry, and I know his unique experience in systems integration, network and program management will be an enormous benefit to our customers," SageNet CEO Daryl Woodard said in a statement.

Mari Martin-Rodish

Management and consulting specialist Mari Martin-Rodish joined Evotek, the No. 1 solution provider on CRN's 2017 Fast Growth 150, as general manager of its professional services business.

Martin-Rodish previously worked as managing partner and vice president of professional services at IT consultancy 3RP. Before that, she was director of Oracle applications at Ports America.

Evotek reported a two-year growth rate of more than 700 percent in 2017, owed largely to fast-rising demand for its digital business services. Founded in 2014, the solution provider has built specialized offerings around data center tech, enterprise storage, virtualization, networking, security and data protection.

Justin Chando

Chando, co-founder and CEO of education collaboration platform Chalkup, has joined Microsoft as principal product manager of education.

Chalkup aims to make learning experiences and management more efficient through technology features such as a rubrics system designed to make project assessment and grading easier.

In the coming months, Chando will work with Microsoft to bring many elements of his platform to Microsoft Teams. Chalkup services will end on June 30 as Chando shifts his focus toward Microsoft Education product leadership.

Manish Sampat

Intent-based networking provider Apstra picked up a key executive in February with the hiring of former Palo Alto Networks executive Manish Sampat as vice president of engineering.

Sampat worked at Palo Alto for the past six-plus years as vice president of engineering, management software and cloud services. His three previous career stops all came at companies that were ultimately acquired by large industry players: Clearwell (bought by Symantec), Peribit (bought by Juniper) and Vital Signs (bought by Lucent Technologies).

Sampat has more than 20 years of engineering experience under his belt and is considered an expert in network management, distributed systems, cloud services and security.

Susan Tidswell

Solution provider CTG appointed Tidswell to lead sales for North America Strategic Staffing division, where she will strategize and execute alongside account execs to drive new client relationships and tighten existing ones.

Tidswell founded workforce solutions provider CRO-holdings in January 2014 and spent the previous seven years serving as vice president and general manager of global sales at staffing and recruiting firm ManpowerGroup. She also has nearly two decades of executive experience gained during her time at RR Donnelly.

"I believe Susan’s proven track record speaks for itself. As a seasoned sales leader with rich experience in staffing and talent management, she will play a critical role in the execution of our growth strategy," said Jeff Gerkin, CTG’s executive vice president of North American sales, in a statement.

Gary Lyng

Violin Systems appointed Lyng to serve as vice president of product management at the enterprise storage vendor, where he’ll work to implement the company’s ambitious product plans while leading its product management teams. He will report directly to CEO and President Ebrahim Abbasi.

Lyng joins Violin from AI-driven video and IoT analytics platform developer WiZR and spent the previous three-plus years at SanDisk, where he was in charge of marketing for its enterprise storage systems, software and solutions for the enterprise, hyper-scale and OEM market segments. Before that, he worked at Dell EMC, NetApp and HPE.

"Gary has helped bring some of our market's most disruptive and most visionary new technologies to life – from big data to hybrid cloud to flash disk," Abbasi said in a statement.