Oxfordadmin@878 | The Oxford Group

NetSuite Names Former Microsoft Exec Studer to CMO Post

NetSuite has named Fred Studer, a former Microsoft and Oracle top marketing executive, to its chief marketing officer post, and charged him with overseeing the company’s worldwide marketing initiatives.

Cloud CRM and ERP provider NetSuite (N) has named Fred Studer, a former Microsoft (MSFT) and Oracle (ORCL) top marketing executive, to its chief marketing officer (CMO) post, and charged him with overseeing the company’s worldwide marketing initiatives, including awareness and adoption of its business management software platform.

The San Mateo, CA-based NetSuite, which concentrates its marketing efforts at mid-sized organizations, large enterprises and divisions of large enterprises seeking to upgrade their client/server ERP and other systems, said Studer’s experience in product and corporate marketing will help flesh out the cloud application provider’s go-to-market strategy.

Moreover, Studer, regarded as a marketing whiz, likely will benefit NetSuite’s channel organization and help partners elevate their marketing campaigns and strategies.

“Fred’s broad experience in enterprise and consumer technology, his innovative approach to marketing and his incredible enthusiasm are an ideal fit as NetSuite continues to lead the way forward in the market for cloud-based business software,” said Zach Nelson, NetSuite chief executive. “Being a passionate marketer myself, I am excited to be working with another marketer with such a creative and innovative flair.”

Nelson has been handling NetSuite’s CMO duties since David Downing exited last year after five years with the company.

Studer’s background includes a seven year stint at Microsoft, where he led product marketing for Dynamics CRM and maintained responsibility for Dynamics ERP products Dynamics AX, NAV, GP, SL, and industry solutions. While at Microsoft, Studer also served as Microsoft Office business general manager handling U.S. subsidiary revenue and P&L for Microsoft Office products.

Microsoft’s Dynamics ERP and CRM rival NetSuite’s product suite in the business management software space.

Prior to his Microsoft tenure, Studer served a 12-year stint at Oracle, most prominently as its marketing group vice president responsible for identifying opportunities, creating strategy, and generating awareness and demand for Oracle applications and industries solutions.

“NetSuite has amazing prospects for continued significant customer growth over the coming years, its strategic direction and track record for innovation mean that the company is extremely well positioned within its market,” said Studer. “NetSuite’s passion for building long-lasting customer success and developing innovative products were significant factors in my decision to join the company,” he said.

For Q3 2014, NetSuite reported $143.7 million in sales, a 34 percent increase over the same period last year. The company lost $29.3 million, or $0.38 a share, for the period, nearly doubling the $16.8 million, or $0.23 a share, it lost at the same time last year.

NetSuite recorded its ninth consecutive quarter of more than 30 percent year-over-year revenue growth as well as Q3 earnings that exceeded its outlook.

The company expects 2014 sales to come in at about $550 million and revenue to spike in 2015 to upwards of $725 million.

Unisys Taps Altabef, Former Dell Services President, as New Chief Executive

Unisys has named Peter Altabef, a 20-year industry veteran with extensive channel experience, as its new president and chief executive.

Unisys (UIS) has named Peter Altabef, a 20-year industry veteran with extensive channel experience, as its new president and chief executive, replacing J. Edward Coleman, who abruptly announced in early October he would step down on December 1 after six years at the company’s helm.

In addition to his executive duties, Altabef also has been granted a seat on Unisys’ board of directors. Paul Weaver, currently serving as Unisys’ interim board chairman, will assume the role on a permanent basis effective January 1, 2015, and Janet Haugen, Unisys chief financial officer (CFO), who’s temporarily been holding down the chief executive slot, will yield to Altabef.

“The board of directors has completed an intensive search process and we are extremely pleased to welcome Peter Altabef, a highly-regarded and experienced IT executive, to the helm of Unisys,” Weaver said.

“As an industry veteran, Peter brings outstanding leadership skills, a track record of delivering top and bottom line results and strong operational execution skills, which will complement the strengths of the existing management team,” he said. “With these attributes, we are confident that Peter will guide Unisys to profitable revenue growth.”

Altabef’s background includes stints as enterprise applications provider Micros Systems’ president and chief executive from January 2013 until Oracle (ORCL) acquired the company this past September. He previously served as Perot Systems president and chief executive from 2004 – 2009 until its acquisition by Dell, when he transitioned to Dell Services president until exiting the company in 2011.

According to a Unisys SEC filing, Altabef will be paid an annual base salary of $972,000 with the opportunity to earn a bonus of at least 125 percent of that figure. He also will be granted 30,000 restricted stock units and options to acquire 140,000 shares of Unisys common stock on January 5, 2015. By April 1, 2015, Altabef will gain another 70,000 performance vesting restricted stock options.

“I have long been impressed by the quality of services and solutions that Unisys brings to the world’s largest companies and government organizations to solve their increasingly complex and mission-critical IT challenges,” Altabef said. “I am pleased to be joining the senior leadership team at Unisys and working with the Company’s talented people around the world to accelerate its progress, leverage growth opportunities and create added value for our clients and shareholders.”

DH Kass | The VAR Guy

Trace3 Names Tyler Beecher New CEO

IT solution provider Trace3 has appointed Tyler Beecher as its latest chief executive officer, succeeding company founder Hayes Drumwright, who will take on a new leadership position as executive chairman of Trace3.

In his new role as CEO, Beecher will be tasked with helping Trace3 to reach its eventual $1 billion annual revenue goal. He previously served as executive vice president of Sales for Trace3, where he was responsible for leading the global sales team and developing management-training programs to accelerate sales and improve customer service. During his tenure as Sales VP, Cisco Systems (CSCO) in 2013 named Trace3 its Innovation Partner of the Year.

“In the short term, we plan to reinforce Trace3’s identity for having the industry’s most elite engineers in Big Data and cloud computing, and broaden our expertise in adjacent sectors that support our transformed data center message,” said Beecher in an email message. “Longer term, we expect to continue our ongoing transformation of Trace3 as a full-services IT solutions provider, including unique new consulting strategies to promote organizational health and management leadership training, which none of our competitors have focused on yet.”

Before joining Trace3 last year, Beecher served as director of Enterprise Sales for NetApp and has also led sales teams at companies including EMC, Cisco Systems and 3Com.

“Tyler is a world-class technology executive who brings extensive experience in the IT trenches to our leadership team,” said Drumwright. “His deep background and broad knowledge prepare him to take Trace3 to the next level of operational excellence as a high-growth company and industry disruptor.”

Drumwright launched Trace3 in 2002 as an IT systems VAR, from which the company has evolved into a full-service partner for IT services such as Big Data consulting forms, cloud computing companies and datacenter infrastructure implementers, according to the press release. Under his leadership, Trace3 reached $420 million in revenue in 2013.

In February, Trace3 kicked off a new, triangulated program to link CIOs with technology suppliers and venture capital firms in the hopes of establishing itself as a technology facilitator to its customers.

Adam Famularo Named Verizon Channel Chief

Verizon (VZ) has appointed channel veteran Adam Famularo as the new vice president of Global Channels, the company announced this week.

Prior to joining Verizon earlier this month, Famularo spent the past 16 years at CA Technologies (CA), where he worked directly with channel partners and solution providers to create channel organizations, MSP channels and other channel-related strategies. Famularo said he believes Verizon needs to build a channel that compliments its customer segmentation strategy and ultimately aligns itself with the way partners work in each specific region.

I believe there is a massive opportunity at Verizon to change the way IT is delivered,” said Famularo in a statement. “The fact that Verizon truly sells solutions into the marketplace—software, hardware, IT services and network—in a way that makes sense for IT very much appeals to me.”

Famularo plans to spend the next several months learning everything he can about Verizon’s channel strategy, including spending time with partners to learn about individual preferences and the dynamics of the markets they are serving. He will work with Janet Schijns, vice president of Corporate, Medium and Indirect Channels at Verizon Enterprise Solutions Group, to build a strong channel business between the two groups and build on the success of the Verizon Partner Program.

“When I look at Verizon, it can take the power of the network and the infrastructure services they can deliver through the cloud and then marry that to other companies’ software and hardware,” said Famularo in an interview with The VAR Guy. “They can deliver real solutions with the marketplace that change the way customers use technology.”

Michael Dell Revels in IT Industry Disruption

A few years ago no would have predicted Dell would be the only end-to-end supplier of IT systems in the market, much less the fact that 40 percent of its revenues are now generated by its channel partners.

At the Dell World 2014 conference this week Michael Dell made it clear that as the CEO of a privately held entity he is now reveling in not only those two facts, but also the level of disruption now occurring across the server market.

With IBM (IBM) selling off its server division to Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) announcing that it is splitting into two companies, Dell said he sees no upper limit to the amount of growth Dell can drive through its channel partners.

To that end, Dell announced this week it is making additional investments in the channel, including:

Programs to accelerate storage sales
Sales tools for enabling upgrades to Windows Server 2003 platforms that are nearly end of life
Additional rewards for partners that grow Dell PC and enterprise sales
Greater access to demo equipment
A doubling of the company’s investment in lead generation campaigns for the channel; and
Better financing terms.

At the same time Dell is also moving to transform how IT is actually consumed in the age of the cloud. Dell announced the beta of a Dell Cloud Marketplace through which it will allow customers to buy cloud services from infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers. Once that marketplace goes live Dell also plans to resell software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications through that online market.

Dell also announced new Core Client Solutions and Workstation Competencies and plans to make advanced competencies in Storage and Identity and Access Management available in the coming months. Finally, Dell is investing millions of dollars to beef up its internal IT systems and provide additional tools for lead management, deal registration, training, certification that will all be mobile-enabled. As part of that effort, Dell committed to reducing cycle times for deal registration approvals, quotes and orders; adding business to business capabilities; and automating rebates and marketing development funds management and incentive payments.

Coupled with a new innovative converged server aimed specifically at taking blade server market share away from Cisco Systems (CSCO), Dell said recent moves by both HP and IBM have more to do with artificially trying to shore up shareholder value than they do with anything to do with the interests of customers or solution providers. As a private company, Dell is no longer beholden to a “90-day shot clock” that is based on the quarterly expectations of Wall Street analysts.

Dell declined to release any financial statements, but the company did claim that Dell was the No. 1 storage supplier in the first half of 2014 based on total terabytes sold for internal and external storage, according to industry analyst firm International Data Corporation (IDC) data, and for the second straight quarter Dell was the only major vendor to generate year-over-year growth in both rack and blade servers, according to IDC data.

Dell Software also registered double-digit revenue growth and the company’s PC business just recorded its seventh consecutive quarter of year-over-year (YoY) gains in global share. According to IDC, Dell’s U.S. PC share is now 24 percent, a 3.1 percentage-point increase over last year and that in the last quarter Dell grew PC shipments by nearly 10 percent.

Dell conceded the company is also taking advantage of its status as a private company to aggressively price products in specific target segments where it wants to gain share. In addition, since establishing relationships with distributors, Dell is now being invited into more deals than when it manages relationships with partners directly.

By any measure, Dell claims that Dell is now growing faster than any of its tier one competitors. And given the current level of disruption in the market and latest product announcement, Dell said he doesn’t see that changing anytime soon.

8X8, RingCentral Leaders in UCaaS Market

Unified communications (UC) providers 8×8 and RingCentral are the two companies dominating the UC-as-a-service (USaaS) market in the third quarter of 2014, according to a new study by Synergy Research Group. 8×8 and RingCentral each own a market share of just under 13 percent, cementing them as the twin 800-pound gorillas in the UCaaS market.

Current OTT (Over the Top Technology) UCaaS figures accounted for 57 percent of quarterly business suite revenues, while private circuit UCaaS accounted for 30 percent of revenue, according to the study. Hybrid deployments made up the remainder of third-quarter revenue. North America continues to be the largest UCaaS market in the world, claiming 85 percent of total worldwide revenue.

Mitel Networks (MITL), meanwhile, continues to gain ground and market share, with the company adding a 60 percent year-on-year increase in revenue and adding more than two times the number of subscribers to become the fastest growing company in the industry. The company has also reported a 30 percent year-over-year increase in market revenues.

Mitel has been a hot name in the UCaaS market for the past several months, with the company aggressively pursuing an acquisition of ShoreTel (SHOR), a rival unified communications company. Earlier this month, Mitel CEO Richard McBee penned his third letter to ShoreTel’s board of directors, following a proposed acquisition price increase to $8.50 per share, or roughly $574 million.

“This is an exciting and disruptive market which is shaking up the old order in enterprise communications, enabling UC to be more broadly adopted in smaller offices and planting the seed for cloud deployments in mid-to-large enterprises,” said Synergy Research Group’s founder and chief analyst Jeremy Duke, in a statement. “The recent tussle between Mitel and ShoreTel clearly demonstrates how important UCaaS and cloud are to traditional enterprise UC vendors and we expect to see more such activity.”

Thus far, ShoreTel has rebuffed all of Mitel’s attempts to acquire the company. Following the Mitel’s most recent offer, ShoreTel’s board urged its stockholders to exercise restraint in selling off their shares until the offer could be properly reviewed. ShoreTel has remained quiet on whether it plans to accept the terms of the acquisition.

Riverbed Appoints Karl Meulema Channel Chief

Industry veteran Karl Meulema has been appointed channel chief at Riverbed Technology (RVBD), the company announced this week. Meulema, whose resume includes executive positions at Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Avaya, replaces former Riverbed channel chief Randy Schirman, who left the company last month for WAN virtualization startup Talari Networks.

In his new role, Meulema will be responsible for helping partners to better understand and sell the Riverbed portfolio and drive the company’s overarching goal of expanding beyond the WAN optimization market and into integrated network solutions.

“We will be making sure that, from a programmatic perspective, we very strongly support the strategic direction Riverbed is taking, where we are really focusing on becoming a much more platform-centric company and driving our total portfolio to the market instead of point products,” Meulema said in an interview with CRN. “So much of our business relies on the channel, so we need to make sure partners are following that same direction and feel supported by our programs.”

Prior to taking on his new role at Riverbed, Meulema was vice president of Global Services and Partners at Avaya. He also served in several executive level positions at Cisco Systems, including tenure as the company’s senior vice president of Global Strategy and Operations.

Meulema marks the second ex-Cisco executive to join the Riverbed team in as many months, with the company recently hiring Paul Mountford to run its sales operation as chief sales officer and senior vice president. In May, the company renamed its entire product portfolio as the Riverbed Application Performance Platform to better reflect value, and achieved VMware Ready-vCloud Air status for several of its solutions.

Earlier this month, Riverbed announced that it would be restructuring its business and working to trim costs in light of pressure from shareholder Elliot Management, according to CRN. The WAN optimization company also lowered its third-quarter financial outlook to reflect its issues, estimating revenue between $276 million and $277 million down from previous forecasts of $285 million and 295 million.

A10 Networks Hires Former Ericsson Exec in Convergence Play

Application networking solution provider A10 Networks (ATEN) has hired Gunter Reiss, a 21-year Ericsson veteran versed in business development, strategic alliances, business partnerships and OEM relationships, to oversee its activities in those areas.

A10 officials said Reiss will be able to capitalize on momentum the company has built for its Thunder portfolio, which features its application delivery controller, carrier-grade networking and new threat protection system, among customers, channel partners and OEMs. In particular, Reiss is tasked with developing relationships with technology partners to support A10’s strategic initiatives.

“Gunter joins A10 Networks at a great time where the interest in the market in working with us is high,” said Ray Smets, A10 Networks global sales vice president. “His vast experience is a perfect fit for A10 Networks at this stage of our growth. The relationships he will develop with key technology partners globally will support our growth strategies in the enterprise, data center, cloud and service provider market.”

In his long tenure at Ericsson, Reiss most recently served as vice president of Business Development and Strategy for IP & Broadband. He previously held senior-level positions in business, partnership, alliances and strategy development at Ericsson offices in Texas and at facilities in Austria and Sweden.

Reiss’ background also includes a three-year stint with Damovo, an IT solutions provider based in Glasgow, Scotland, and IPC. He’s also held a seat on Skorpios Technologies’ board of directors and was a member of the Sun Microsystems customer advisory board.

In late April, A10 kicked off its revamped Affinity Partner program to motivate and reward channel partners selling its application service gateway products.

Security Provider RSA Elevates Yoran to President

RSA, storage giant EMC’s (EMC) security unit, has promoted its Products senior vice president Amit Yoran to president and tasked him with delivering a unified customer experience across the division’s products and services and its marketing and sales initiatives.

Art Coviello, RSA’s executive chairman, will collaborate with Yoran to formulate and advance the security division’s strategies, officials said. Yoran, who RSA described as “one of the industry’s foremost authorities on the evolution of the security landscape” is said to have a keen understanding of how enterprises can best defend against threats increasing in sophistication and frequency.

Yoran has some 20 years of cyber security experience under his belt and is credited with driving RSA’s Intelligence Driven Security strategy and tying its product portfolio to meet the new and emerging security challenges facing enterprises today.

“We are excited to have Amit in this role,” said Coviello. “His passion, deep industry expertise, and experience running agile organizations will help enable RSA to enhance the development, delivery and customer experience of the Intelligence Driven Security platforms and services enterprises need to effectively defend themselves in an increasingly complex threat landscape.”

Yoran joined RSA in 2011 when it acquired NetWitness, a company he founded and served as its chief executive. He previously held Riptech’s chief executive post until it was acquired by Symantec in 2002, staying on as Worldwide Managed Security Services vice president. Yoran also has served as the founding director of the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) and as a founding member of the US Department of Defense’s CERT program.

“In the face of dramatic technology change and rapidly evolving threats, today’s security market is in need of a radical transformation,” said Yoran. “RSA is in a unique position to lead this change,” he said.

“We have the vision, the products and services, and the talent to deliver the Intelligence Driven Security that helps enable enterprises to communicate, collaborate, and innovate securely,” said Yoran. “I am excited to focus all of RSA’s resources on solving these challenges and ensuring our customers have the security and peace of mind they need and deserve.”

Google Reorg: Pichai Now Boss of All Google Products

Sundar Pichai, head of Google’s (GOOG) Android, Apps and Chrome business, now is boss of all the company’s core products, including commerce and ads, Google+, infrastructure, maps, research and search, in an executive reorganization spearheaded by chief executive Larry Page.

According to Re/code, which first reported the shakeup, the six Google executives heading product groups newly under Pichai’s domain—Alan Eustace in research; Amit Singhal in search; Dave Besbris in social; Jen Fitzpatrick in maps; Sridhar Ramaswamy in ads and commerce; and, Urs Hölzle in technical infrastructure—no longer report to Page but instead to Pichai.

All except for Besbris, who joined Google in 2008, have been with the company for more than 10 years, Re/code reported, and are not expected to balk at the management change.

As the new de-facto Google product guru, Pichai will report to Page, but his Android and Chrome senior vice president title won’t change for now, the report said.

Left out of the management reorganization is Google’s YouTube group, whose chief executive Susan Wojcicki will continue to report to Page, according to the Re/code account.

In a company memo to employees, Page said he believes shuffling product unit oversight to Pichai will free him to focus on the 35,000-foot view as well as existing and new products, Re/code reported. He will continue to manage business and operations, and maintain responsibility for Nest, Calico, Google X, corporate development, legal, finance and ad sales, along with overseeing access and energy, a new unit run by Craig Barratt, the former Qualcomm (QCOM) Atheros head.

Google recently appointed Hiroshi Lockheimer, its mobile OS Android Engineering vice president, to oversee the desktop and notebook-focused Chrome OS engineering team, putting him in charge of engineering for both products and renewing speculation the vendor will coordinate or perhaps even merge the two operating systems at some point in the near future.

Pichai has maintained that Google has no plans to merge Android and the Chrome OS. “We view them as building blocks,” he said in March. “By investing in both, we believe that over time we will be able to meet almost all use cases.”