Category: People on the Move

Global distribution behemoth Ingram Micro (NYSE: IM) has promoted Kirk Robinson to senior vice president, Commercial Markets and Global Accounts for North America, expanding his prior role to include ownership of the distributor’s global accounts and supervision of additional strategic key business units. He is responsible for managing the business leaders responsible for Ingram’s SMB, public sector and VAR business units along with some top-performing system product categories and vendor relationships.

Robinson, who has been with Ingram for 20 years, is credited with making a significant impact on Ingram’s U.S. sales teams and spearheading the launch of the distributor’s Business Intelligence Center in 2009. Under Robinson, Ingram’s commercial markets division and its SMB business unit have posted record growth rates and brought on hundreds of new channel partners, according to the company.

In 2006, Robinson was named vice president of Ingram North America channel marketing and in 2010 he was appointed vice president of VAR sales, market development and business intelligence followed shortly afterward by his ascension to vice president of Ingram’s U.S. commercial markets business.

“Year-over-year, Ingram Micro earns its title as the IT channel’s most strategic and valuable distributor. I am eager to work side-by-side with my team and our channel partners to break new territory and exceed our shared goals,” Robinson said in a prepared statement.

Part of that new territory Ingram Micro hopes to make its mark in is physical security, which is fast becoming a hot market for channel partners to take advantage of the growing demand for solutions tied to identity protection. To that end, the distributor has added HID Global’s secure identity solutions to its line card, offered through its Physical Security division.

HID Global offers a portfolio that includes physical and logical access control including strong authentication and credential management, card printing and personalization, visitor management systems, highly secure government and citizen identification and identification RFID technologies used in animal ID and industry and logistics applications. Target markets include government, financial services, corporate, education, retail and health care.

The company maintains a channel partner program consisting of 232 OEMs, distributors, resellers and integrators worldwide. Program members receive sales leads and marketing assistance, and, along those lines, Ingram plans to offer both its and HID Global’s partners sales and support services including cross-trained technical support and training programs.

“As security threats become more complex, the business need for more advanced and highly integrated security solutions, such as secure identity, authentication management and access control, becomes increasingly more important and presents a growing business opportunity for channel partners specializing in this space,” said Tom Burns, Ingram Physical Security business unit director.

Storage area networking vendor Brocade Communications (NASDAQ: BRCD) has named Lloyd Carney, a 30-year high tech industry veteran, as its new chief executive replacing Michael Klayko, who held the post since 2005 and whose planned resignation the company announced some four months ago as it continues to search for a suitable buyer.

Carney, who most recently headed Xsigo Systems and Micromuse, brings with him some experience in selling companies, a factor that likely entered into the company’s decision to hire him, considering its sustained interest in finding a buyer. This past July, Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) bought Xsigo, a network virtualization specialist, and seven years ago IBM (NYSE: IBM) landed Micromuse, a network management software developer, for $865 million. Both deals occurred on Carney’s watch.

David House, Brocade chairman, said Carney will take the company “to the next level,” owing to his “relentless passion for driving innovation and operational excellence. These characteristics, combined with his track record of execution including delivering growth and increasing shareholder value, make him an outstanding choice to lead Brocade into its next phase.”

House credited Klayko with shepherding Brocade’s market gains in storage networking and Ethernet fabrics and building the vendor’s portfolio of networking products.

In addition to his Xsigo and Micromuse stints, Carney’s background also spans tenures as Juniper Networks’ chief operating officer, president of Nortel Networks’ Core IP, Wireless Internet and Enterprise businesses, and executive vice president and general manager of Bay Networks’ Enterprise business unit.

“I believe Brocade is poised to leverage its heritage of strong innovation and significantly disrupt the status quo in the data-networking industry,” said Carney. “There are profound changes happening across high tech today and Brocade has a great opportunity to lead that transformation through differentiated products and customer focus. Success here will accelerate profitable growth for our company and drive further value for our shareholders. I am very excited and honored to lead Brocade at this time.”

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) has named Nick Adamo (pictured) to succeed Chuck Robbins as its top executive in the Americas, CRN reported today. The news comes as rival Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) wraps up its Global Partner Conference in Las Vegas. We wonder: Did Cisco leak the news to shift the spotlight away from Juniper’s partner and software strategy — which has garnered a lot of attention this week? Hmmm…

Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson and the executive team announced a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) strategy on Jan. 15. Media coverage extended from channel pundits all the way to The New York Times. That same day, Juniper Executive VP Bob Muglia suggested that Cisco would have a hard time transitioning to SDN.

The mood at Juniper Global Partner Conference is upbeat but also one of transition. Some hardware partners are a little nervous about all this SDN talk. But Juniper outlined a comprehensive strategy. The roadmap is now publicly available. The Juniper SDN chatter is loud. All is well…

Pardon the Interruption

…Until Cisco comes along and grabs some of the spotlight. A few hours ago (Jan. 16, 5:52 p.m. ET), CRN reported :

“Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO) has named Nick Adamo to succeed Chuck Robbins as its top executive in the Americas, CRN has learned.

According to an internal memo authored by Robbins and viewed by CRN, Adamo will take over as senior vice president, worldwide field operations, the Americas. The job has been open since Robbins was named senior vice president of global sales back in October.”

Hmmm… Did Cisco leak the news to shift some of this week’s channel spotlight away from Juniper? Perhaps. We have attended plenty of conferences where rivals dial his cell phone to share “some timely news” on background…

Pure Speculation (Isn’t That the Best Kind?)

But the alleged Cisco leak and alleged timing with Juniper’s conference is pure speculation on our part. Plus, there’s this fact to consider: The CRN editor who penned the story, Chad Berndtson, is a news hound who does his homework, develops sources, and stays ahead of the news curve. So there’s a high probability Berndtson was working his sources and scooping this story without any Cisco-timed leaks.

Either way, it’s been a heck of a week. And it’s only Wednesday. Juniper has outlined an ambitious SDN strategy. And Cisco continues to evolve its executive team while ramping up its own SDN initiatives. Long live channel conflict — at least between the networking vendors 😉

While the IT industry last week took a collective holiday break, two distribution giants made moves worth noting: Ingram Micro (NYSE: IM)  made three executive management appointments impacting its consumer electronics division, and Avnet (NYSE: AVT) scooped up  TSSLink to beef up its services expertise.

At Ingram Micro, Brent McCarthy moves from executive director and general manager of the distributor’s Consumer Electronics unit to executive managing director of the U.K. and Ireland operations, replacing Matt Sanderson, who returns to Australia to head the company’s operations down under. Tom Bamrick, who most recently served as executive director of Global Sales and handled global partner development, will take McCarthy’s former post.

McCarty has led Ingram’s Consumer Electronics unit since 2009, after heading VAR sales for Ingram’s Canada division. He will report to Johan Vandenbussche, regional vice president, U.K., Belgium and Netherlands, with Ingram’s EMEA operation. Bamrick, who joined Ingram in 1994, will report to Brian Wiser, Ingram Specialty Division senior vice president.

Paul Bay, Ingram North America president, called McCarthy and Bamrick “seasoned and respected industry leaders, and we are confident they will deliver new growth and opportunity for our business.”

Meanwhile, Ingram rival Avnet continued to flesh out its services lineup by purchasing TSSLink, a $10.5 million, San Jose, Calif.-based IT professional services organization specializing in consulting for storage and virtualization solutions.

TSSLink, which provides technical support, consulting and outsourcing services, field product installation, end-user training and technical staffing, will be folded into the services organization of Avnet’s Technology Solutions (ATS) distribution arm. The eight-year old TSSLink also provides IT audit and compliance leadership, disaster recovery and business continuity planning consulting and technical support.

“A key component of our solutions distribution strategy is the ability to drive growth for our suppliers and value-added resellers in markets where demand is continually increasing, such as storage and virtualization,” said Jeff Bawol, ATS president.

Avnet said that the TSSLink acquisition is expected to be immediately accretive to earnings and that it maps to the company’s stated goal of 12.5 percent return on capital. The purchase price was not disclosed.

In the last year, Avnet has made significant gains to its services capabilities with a number of key acquisitions, including last October’s purchase of BrightStar Partners (BSP), a Rolling Meadows, Ill.-based, $10 million consulting specialist in IBM (NYSE: IBM) business analytics and performance management, and BSP Software, its software development unit. In March, Avnet acquired Ascendant Technology, an IBM middleware reseller and consultant, continued its shopping spree in July by adding Mattelli, an IT contract compliance solution provider, then in August buying Pepperweed Consulting, an HP (NYSE: HPQ) Software Elite Partner.

So far, Avnet appears to be keeping the requisite arm’s length distance from its acquisitions that otherwise might pose questions of impropriety owing to a perceived conflict of interest.

In mid-December 2012, Avnet tapped Kevin Moriarty, a 10-year veteran of Honeywell International’s (NYSE: HON) aerospace business, as its new chief financial officer (CFO) to succeed Ray Sadowski, a 34-year company veteran retiring from the post after a 20-year stint.