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VMware Appoints Former Gartner Analyst as Americas CTO

VMware (VMW) has appointed former Gartner (IT) research vice president Chris Wolf as its new chief technology officer for the Americas, just a few weeks after it named Ben Fathis as its CTO.

Wolf made the announcement Jan. 27 in a blog post, offering his reason for making the career move. “I always thought that it would take the absolute perfect opportunity for me to leave Gartner,” he said, “and I strongly believe VMware has provided it.”

Wolf argued in his post that 15 years ago, “Most of the industry didn’t foresee that VMware would fundamentally reshape the enterprise data center like it has. If you look at the work that VMware has done with the software-defined data center (SDDC), it’s easy to see that industry skepticism is back.

“One could argue that the cloud era will also accelerate data center consolidation, and that’s true,” he said. “However, when you consider the vCloud Hybrid Service (vCHS) and the massive vCloud service provider network, VMware is well-positioned to offer the most complete and customer-friendly hybrid cloud offering in the market.”

Additionally, VMware has understood the evolution of the modern workforce for years, he said, insisting its recent acquisition of AirWatch is an example of this understanding. “VMware has the essential ingredients to deliver a truly unified workspace environment.”

In his new role with Gartner, Wolf said he “will be continuing to do many of the things” he enjoyed doing at Gartner.

“I’ll be even more active in social media and community engagement, and I’ll be working closely with VMware customers across the Americas on their current and future cloud, mobile and virtualization strategies,” he said. “Unlike my role at Gartner, I’ll now have a direct conduit into VMware’s talented product teams to ensure that community needs are being met and often exceeded.

“You need a partner that wants to be there with you and share in your successes,” he continued. “I and my talented colleagues at VMware want to be that strategic partner.”

It’s an interesting move for Wolf, considering he criticized VMware last year for losing “its inner voice” on its journey to becoming a larger company.

“If VMware wants to really get the SDDC to take off, it needs to rediscover its inner rebellious teenager – the one that got it to where it is in the first place,” he said.

Red Hat’s Channel Chief Search Narrows Candidate Field

Red Hat (RHT) Global Channel Sales Senior Vice President Mark Enzweiler told us yesterday that the company is still searching for a new channel chief, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been movement.

The company began its search after Roger Egan, the company’s former chief, moved on to open source engine Docker.

While Enzweiler would not comment on possible candidates, he did provide the following updates for partners:

The list of candidates has been narrowed down to just under 10
Enzweiler said he has been speaking with candidates during his time at the conference, but has been doing so over the phone
Red Hat is looking at internal and external candidates
After Red Hat hires a new chief, the company’s channel strategy will stay on its course
Enzweiler would like to new hire to start ASAP

Enzweiler also noted that the interest in the channel chief position has been high — something he is very pleased with.

Red Hat North America Channel Sales and Alliances Senior Director Bob Wilson and Red Hat North America Channel Sales Senior Director Jerry Lumpkin are sharing Egan’s former responsibilites until the company hires a new channel chief.

Juniper Appoints New U.S. Channel Chief

Juniper Networks‘ 2014 Global Partner Conference begins tomorrow, and the company will be going into the conference with a new Americas channel chief. It slipped out last week that Jonathan Belcher, the company’s vice president of Partner Sales for Asia-Pacific, has shifted his focus to the Americas and taken on the channel chief role.

The networking vendor has been without an Americas channel chief since November when Chris Jones, who was vice president of Channel Sales for the Americas, left the company after only five months in the role. Jones replaced Frank Vitagliano last April. Vitagliano left Juniper to head to Dell, while Jones pursued a new opportunity at Avaya.

There is no official word from Juniper yet as to what Belcher’s new title will be. Don’t be surprised to hear the official announcement regarding Belcher’s appointment as Juniper’s Global Partner Conference kicks off.

Juniper has faced a fair amount of senior executive upheaval lately. Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson announced his retirement in July, noting to shareholders and media that he would stay on until a suitable replacement could be found. Shaygan Kheradpir took the reins as of January 1, so he isn’t quite two weeks into his new role.

Then in early October, Juniper found itself facing the prospect of replacing Worldwide Channel Chief Emilio Umeoka, who announced he was leaving the company. Umeoka has led Juniper’s channel strategy and sales team since December 2010. The senior vice president of Worldwide Partners and Alliances is still finishing out his term at Juniper, and the names of the executives who will fill his shoes include David Helfer, vice president of Worldwide Channels and Commercial, and Doug Erickson, vice president of Worldwide Partner Programs and Development. It’s likely we’ll hear from both Helfer and Erickson at the Juniper partner conference.

Some stability within the company’s channel roles and top leadership could help prepare Juniper and its VARs for the next wave of networking solutions and services. The company posted strong profits in both Q2 and Q3, but it’s not without its troubles. During its third-quarter earnings report, the company announced it would be undergoing a 3 percent workforce reduction, laying off about 280 employees.

Why You Haven’t Hired the Right VP of Sales for Your Cloud Computing Company and What To Do About It

I have talked with many CEOs who are looking to hire a VP of Sales. Finding the ideal fit for your organization, and avoiding a mis-hire, can be challenging. That is one of the many reasons I created The Oxford Group’s unique Reverse Engineering Strategy.

When matching experience to fit, I always consider:

Which candidate is most successful at handling your type of business model? Whether you need a VP of Sales who has handled more in-bound sales or out-bound sales, hiring a VP of Sales that fits your primary business model is crucial.

Which VP has the most experience with Competitive Sales? If your market is highly competitive, the VP of Sales you hire needs to thrive when competing in that arena. If you are recruiting from other companies, consider, for example, that a VP of Sales who comes out of a Salesforce.com environment might be great at closing, upselling, driving up a deal size, or convincing companies to purchase something that might not be launched for 6-12 months, but this guy may not be your best choice since your market may not necessarily compete with Microsoft, Oracle, etc. in a winner-takes-all fashion.

Which candidate has the most experience with your company’s deal sizes? I also consider his or her experience with regard to all-commodity volume (ACV) for the majority of SaaS companies. Does the guy you are considering hiring have the most experience with an ACV of $1-9K, $10-90K, or $100K+? Whatever the size of the organization, it is crucial that he or she be a proper fit for your largest customer base.

In addition to CEOs, sales personnel and technical personnel, we have successfully recruited and placed the right VP of Sales using a recruitment approach to avoid misfires to give our clients the horsepower they require to achieve success. A mishire can costs the average Cloud company approximately $3,500,000 in cost and lost revenue. The Oxford Group has created a lifetime warranty strategy on cloud salesman that are hired to assist cloud computing companies with their growth and budget challenges.

I have worked with many executives in overcoming their challenges in reaching their goals both in their current roles and the next move in their career. As a senior executive if you have thought about a job change, our Stealth Reverse Search could be your ticket to that new leading edge technology company.

Contact us at: TheOxfordGroup@att.net, by phone at 214 360 4000, or schedule an appointment at https://theoxfordgroup.youcanbook.me/

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Red Hat Channel Chief Roger Egan Leaves for Docker

Red Hat (RHT) Channel Chief Roger Egan is moving on to Docker, an open source engine.

According to Egan’s LinkedIn profile, his new role at Docker is senior vice president of Channel and Sales.

Docker is an open source engine that automates the deployment of any application as a lightweight, portable, self-sufficient container that will run virtually anywhere.

A Red Hat spokesperson said Red Hat is “now actively searching for a new head of North America channel sales.”

Until Red Hat names a replacement, Bob Wilson, Red Hat senior director of North America channel sales, and Jerry Lumpkin, Red Hat senior director of North America channel sales, will share Egan’s responsibilities, the spokesperson said.

Egan’s exit comes just ahead of the 2014 Red Hat Partner Summit, slated for Jan. 13-15 in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was hired by Mark Enzweiler, vice president of Global Channels and Alliances for Red Hat, back in 2007.

“Enzweiler has said publicly that when Egan told him he was leaving, he had mixed emotions,” the spokesperson said. “While he was sad to see Roger leave, he recognized this was a great opportunity for him.”

The spokesperson added that Egan officially left Red Hat on Friday, Jan. 3.

Stay tuned for further coverage.

IBM Names New North American Channel Chief

IBM (IBM) has tapped Tami Duncan as the company’s new North American channel chief, an IBM spokesperson confirmed for us.

According to Duncan’s LinkedIn profile, she most recently held the role of client advocacy executive at IBM, where she coordinated and managed client interactions for IBM CEO Virginia M. Rometty.

Duncan also held a variety of positions over the years at IBM, including North American director of sales, which required her to manage a team that delivered sales, as well as hardware, software and services, through Avnet and their downstream IBM Business Partners, according to her LinkedIn profile.

The IBM spokesperson noted that Duncan’s new role and her plans for the channel will be revealed during this year’s IBM PartnerWorld Leadership Conference, Feb. 10 to 13, in Las Vegas.

Will Duncan address any of the challenges that IBM must overcome to thrive in 2014? We’ll stay on top of the coverage.

Fortinet Sues Sophos over Executive Pilfering

Security vendor Fortinet (FTNT) has sued smaller rival Sophos, claiming it has been victimized by executive poaching in violation of an existing agreement tied to a key departure from the vendor’s management ranks earlier this year.

The lawsuit, filed Dec. 16 in San Jose, Calif., in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, alleges that Michael Valentine, a former Fortinet top executive who joined Sophos in April as its Worldwide Sales vice president, engineered subsequent, similar moves by a number of his colleagues. The complaint points specifically to three Fortinet employees who left at the same time and another a few months later to join Sophos.

In April, Kendra Krause, Fortinet’s former Channel Sales and Operations vice president, joined Sophos as its new channel chief. Krause is not named in the lawsuit.

Fortinet’s complaint, in which it asks for a jury trial and damages, alleges Valentine breached a clause in his contract upon his exit from the company. According to the court filing, as reported by PC World, Valentine agreed that for “twelve months from this date, I will not directly or indirectly solicit, induce, recruit or encourage any of [Fortinet’s] employees to leave their employment.”

In addition to alleging Valentine broke his deal with Fortinet, the company also is claiming Sophos has infringed on three of its security technology-related patents, which PC World report listed as U.S. patents 7,698,744, “Secure system for following the execution of authorized computer program code”; and U.S. patents 8,069,487 and 8,195,938, “Cloud-based application whitelisting.”

Sophos Responds

In response to the lawsuit, Sophos chief Kris Hagerman, in a lengthy blog post, wrote, “We have great respect for Fortinet as a company and as a competitor. But they’ve got this one all wrong.”

Hagerman dismissed what he called “Fortinet’s attempt to retain employees by restricting their freedom to join a successful company like Sophos (or any other company).” He further chided Fortinet, saying if it “wishes to retain their employees we suggest they stop resorting to courtroom and legal tactics they know are without merit, and instead consider what it is that makes Sophos such a desirable place to work.”

The Sophos boss followed with a list of Sophos’ advantages, including its product vision, channel-centric approach and “winning” strategy. Pointing to Sophos’ outpacing the market with a 23 percent uptick in UTM billings in the past two quarters and 12 percent overall growth in the period, he said, “It shouldn’t be a surprise that people want to work for a company like Sophos that is gaining share and making a difference in the market.”

Hagerman closed his blog by adding fuel to the fire.

“I assure you that Sophos will not let ill-conceived and meritless lawsuits stand in the way of delivering powerful IT security solutions,” he said. “Lawsuits like this only confirm that our strategy is attracting the right talent to deliver the products that will keep our customers safe.”

And, he invited worthy candidates to come on over.

“If you think you have what it takes, I invite you to join our cause by applying here.”

This could make for an interesting legal proceeding.

Double Your Cloud Computing Startup’s Sales in 90 Days With the Right VP Sales

Most CEO’s, Presidents of Cloud companies that I have talked with don’t know how to do this – but it can be done. I’ve spoken to several C level executives that have accomplished it. Is it easy? No. It takes finding the perfect VP Sales who, after examining the numbers and sifting through data and where the skeletons are buried in your cloud startup, can see the potential in the raw materials.

If your company has just dog-paddled its way through a difficult year, you have no time to waste in getting a great VP Sales on board. The cloud computing industry is going to quadruple in size over the next 4 years.

Where will you find this strong candidate? What resources will your new VP Sales have to work with? You may not have time to bring in any new customers. I doubt you can change your product or competition. Your pricing, target customer, and target deal size is probably also static. Your best bet is to do as much as you can with the customers you already have.

You are going to have to make the most of every minute, so I’ve compiled a list of 5 things this VP must do immediately.

He is going to need to bring at least 2-3 new killer reps – proven closers – with him when he walks in the door on Day 1. These reps don’t necessarily have to have a great deal of product knowledge. They just need to know basic Cloud sales processes at your pricepoint – AND be expert closers.

Reconfiguring the sales team is the next order on the agenda. Your new VP Sales must be able to recognize talent and pinpoint the top producers. All precious leads must be routed to the closers. There simply isn’t time to waste them on slackers. As a matter of fact, getting rid of those who aren’t delivering should be your next move.

The super successful VPs of Sales that I know recognize that they just can’t do it all themselves. They know they are going to have to zero in on productivity by focusing on doubling and tripling the best of what they have. This guy is going to bring on board additional talent who can sell at 2-3x the rate of the former reps. I have used a Reverse Engineering Technique to bring this kind of talent along with existing deals to the table.

Since time is of the essence, one thing your VP Sales simply must do is forget about the pipeline as a metric. Pipeline doesn’t matter if it isn’t going to close. The focus needs to be on closing deals now.

Lastly, your previous sales team was probably struggling with, or running from, the competition. It’s time to put aside that mindset. The new VP will need to learn what he can or have come from the competition. It is vital that your VP Sales is able to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the team so that closing deals can be the primary focus. We have implemented a strategy for many clients to locate those VP of sales who can bring the top guns with existing deals by implementing our Hypergrowth Strategy. Getting a VP that can bring a team with him is of critical importance.

Chances are your time is limited to about 180 days. You will either sink or swim. And what this VP does will determine that.

It’s going to take a VP Sales with an immense amount of focus and cloud savvy who has broken his pick at other organizations so he doesn’t break it at yours. Since time is of the essence, you will need to find a way to infiltrate the competition. We have done this hundreds of times utilizing a Reverse Engineering Technique coupled with the lifetime Warranty Program that insures your success.

Cloud Provider Internap Names New Channel Chief

Cloud platform and hosting services provider Internap (INAP) has named Joseph Stagliano, a former Broadview sales director, as its new channel chief, according to a blog post by Stephen Callahan, the company’s Global Sales senior vice president.

Stagliano, whose official title is Global Channel Sales vice president, brings 12 years of channel development and management experience to the job with a sound background in sales and operations. In addition to his six-year stint at VoIP specialist Broadview, Stagliano served as agent sales director at InfoHighway Communications for about eight years following a 10-year tenure at Verizon Telecom (VZ), where he held a number of product and operations management posts.

“Joe’s unique combination of technical expertise and sales leadership gives Internap an opportunity to build on the accomplishments of our channel program and continue to nurture and grow our relationships with partners,” said Callahan.

Internap’s Performance Partner program supports channel partners acting as resellers or agents in an extension of the company’s sales force—representing its line of cloud, hosting, colocation and hybrid services. The vendor also offers a Referral Program for partners to refer its services to customers in exchange for a fee.

Participants in the vendor’s Performance Partner program are eligible for an enablement package that includes marketing tools, access to sales and technical consultants, a dedicated partner representative, training and what Internap calls a “residual commission for playing an active role in securing Internap business.” Members include interactive advertising agencies, CMS providers, MSPs, commercial real estate agents, IT consultants, Web developers, SIs and VARs.

In late October, Internap bought iWeb, a Montreal-based hosting and cloud provider, for some $145 million, in a deal it expects will balloon its annual sales to more than $320 million and extend its reach further into the SMB market and international sales. In its FY 2013 ended Sept. 30, iWeb posted $44 million in sales.

Internap is slated to present to investors on Dec. 11 at the UBS 41st Annual Global Media and Communications Conference in New York.

Westcon Taps B2B Pro, Ex-Dell Exec as New Chief

Distributor Westcon Group has dipped into the B2B and logistics services industry to appoint Dolph Westerbos to its chief executive slot effective Jan. 1, 2014, succeeding Dean Douglas, who’s leaving the company after a nearly five-year stint at the helm.

Westerbos is a 20-year veteran in B2B services and channels, who most recently served as Asia Pacific and EMEA group president for Brambles and its CHEP subsidiary, a publicly held, Sydney, Australia-based company specializing in pallet and container pooling solutions and related logistics services. He is regarded as a specialist in B2B services, supply chain and asset management and business process outsourcing.

In succeeding Douglas, Westerbos has big shoes to fill. Douglas, who is leaving for what Westcon described as “another business opportunity,” is a highly regarded IT executive with more than 30 years of industry experience under his belt, including telecommunications and wireless expertise.

Westcon is banking on Westerbos’ B2B services, operations and emerging market experience to pick up where Douglas left off and then some. Westerbos is tasked with building Westcon’s value-added distribution profile beyond the company’s current $4 billion in sales and extending its reach in growth markets.

“Dolph has a great track record of managing organizations that couple premier technology-based solutions and services, built on strong operational capabilities,” said Jens Montanana, Datatec chief executive. Westcon is Datatec’s IT distribution subsidiary. “Combined with his global background and experience in emerging markets, this makes him a great fit to take Westcon’s market leadership even further.”

Westerbos is credited with generating some $2 billion in services revenue at Brambles and leading the company’s market strategy, product development and global customer organizations. His background also includes a four-year stint at Dell starting in 2006 as Netherlands managing director and progressing to Western Europe Channels director and ultimately EMEA Solutions and Services vice president.

While at Dell, Westerbos was credited with guiding its managed services, consulting and data center products business to some $2.5 billion in sales and establishing the vendor’s channel business in Western Europe.

Before Dell, Westerbos held a 12-year tenure at BPO specialist ModusLink (MLNK) in management, operations, technology and sales roles.

“Westcon’s success is based on an ability to deliver real-world technology solutions and services that target the most difficult challenges facing the data center, network, security, and unified communications marketplaces,” said Westerbos. “I’m excited to be joining the company at this pivotal time to accelerate its next stage of growth.”