Category: People on the Move

Technology integrator Carousel Industries has expanded its U.S. sales reach south and west and hired four new executives to push the company’s unified communications and collaboration platform solutions and services to midmarket and enterprise customers.

Chief among the appointments is Rhonda Wingate, Carousel’s new Collaboration president, who will oversee the company’s collaboration practice, including its Microsoft (MSFT) unified communications (UC) business, and develop strategic sales and marketing plans and programs. Wingate is a 20-year video, digital media and managed services veteran with prior stints at AVI-SPL and BT Conferencing. She will report directly to James Marsh, Carousel senior vice president.

Carousel’s other three new executives fill key sales slots. Carousel said it wants to expands its reach into midmarket accounts in other regions of the U.S. beyond its efforts in New England, near its Exeter, Rhode Island, headquarters.

Kelly Lichtenberger, previously LifeSize Communications inside sales director, has been named inside sales vice president, tasked with growing the company’s inside sales team across all of its business units and geographic regions. Lichtenberger will report directly to Marsh.

In addition, Carousel has named Frank Douglas to head its sales team in the southern United States and Cindy Morgan to lead the company’s sales efforts in Northern California. Douglas, a 20-year industry veteran, previously served in a lead sales role at TW Telecom Georgia. His official title is Midmarket sales director.

Morgan has 19 years of experience in the technology industry, with prior positions at MCI, Qwest, Avaya, ATC Logistics, NACR and TSE Communications.

“We are entering an exciting new phase of growth at Carousel and are excited to welcome Rhonda, Kelly, Cindy and Frank as part of our team,” said Marsh. “As unified communications platforms now play an integral role in corporate infrastructures and have changed the way enterprises interact and conduct business, we want to ensure our customers have access to the most advanced collaboration solutions to effectively leverage these technologies.”

Absolute Software (ABT) welcomed former EMC executive Geoff Haydon as its new CEO last week, as the endpoint security company looks to stabilize its current leadership. Haydon, who also was named to the company’s Board of Directors, will be responsible for leading the company’s global business efforts.

“We are extremely pleased to have someone of Geoff’s caliber join to lead Absolute,” said Daniel P. Ryan, chairman of Absolute, in a prepared statement. “With his background in enterprise security software and his proven track record of growth and experience in both North American and global markets, he is the right person to take Absolute to the next level in terms of revenue growth, global reach and increased profitability.”

Haydon has more than 20 years of experience in the IT sector, including a longstanding history with EMC. Prior to his new appointment at Absolute, Haydon was chief operating officer for EMC’s Asia-Pacific and Japan region, where he led the company’s business unit. Haydon has also served in various leadership positions at RSA, a division of EMC, including vice president of Americas Sales and as the leader of the RSA business for Asia Pacific and Japan, according to the press release. He is expected to join Absolute July 7, and will be stationed at the company’s corporate head office in Vancouver.

In light of Haydon’s appointment, Absolute COO Rob Chase announced he will be stepping down from his current position as of June 18 to pursue other interests. Chase will remain involved with Absolute in a limited role as a strategic adviser for the foreseeable future. Interim CEO Errol Olsen will continue in his role as chief financial officer at Absolute once Haydon takes up the mantle next month.

“I am tremendously excited about the opportunity to join the team at Absolute and to build on the company’s past success,” said Haydon. “Absolute has a unique solution portfolio that addresses the key security and management challenges that organizations are facing with the rise of mobility. With a broad product portfolio, diverse customer base and strong financial foundation, Absolute is extremely well-positioned to take advantage of this multi-billion market opportunity.”

“The formation of our new Global Partner Operations organization is key to driving scale and adoption of the SAP Cloud powered by SAP HANA,” said Bill McDermott, SAP co-chief executive. “Rodolpho will engage with a vibrant and open ecosystem of more than 11,500 companies worldwide to unlock the potential of every customer to become a best-run business.”

Following Cardenuto’s promotion to global channel chief, the SAP Americas business will be split into one unit for North America and another for Latin America. Jennifer Morgan is slated to command the North America division while Diego Dzodan, current leading SAP Brazil, is expected to head the Latin America unit.

SAP also reportedly has fired Shawn Price, its Cloud business unit chief, only days after a shakeup in its senior ranks that saw the appointments of Rob Enslin and Bernd Leukert to its executive board and the exit of Vishal Sikka, who oversaw the launch of HANA, SAP’s cloud software platform.

Re/code initially reported Price’s departure, which subsequently was confirmed by an SAP spokesperson. “His role was a transformational role, and we’re at a point where we’re a leading cloud player,” the spokesperson said.

Price, who took over SAP’s cloud business following Robert Calderoni’s departure in January, will not be replaced. “There will no longer be a single individual cloud executive,” the spokesperson said. “His responsibilities will be divided among other executives.”

Greg McStravik, who currently heads SAP’s U.S. business, will now command HANA in the wake of Sikka’s exit. Enslin ascended to SAP’s cloud business senior level following the departure of Lars Dalgaard, the chief executive and co-founder of SAP acquisition SuccessFactors, who left for a venture capital position at Andreessen Horowitz.

Enslin, a 23-year company veteran, is slotted to lead SAP’s Global Sales operation, while Leukert, a 20-year employee regarded as a tech visionary, will head SAP’s development initiatives, the report said.

The reshuffled management deck is playing out only two weeks ahead of SAP’s annual shareholder meeting May 21 when McDermott, SAP co-chief executive with Jim Hagemann Snabe, will take the top slot alone as Hagemann Snabe retires.

The management moves are said to be tied to McDermott’s plan to reposition cloud software as central to SAP’s solutions portfolio rather than its traditional on-premise software offerings.

Will Knight, a former 15-year Microsoft (MSFT) veteran, is Rackspace Hosting’s (RAX) new channel sales head, charged with building strategic partner relationships and sprinkling the program with incentives to improve profitability and sales.

Knight’s role is to show Rackspace’s partners how to make more money by simplifying the program and clarifying how to best engage with the vendor to maximize the relationship. He’s no newbie to channel- and customer-facing positions, commanding some 20 years of experience in IT, sales, marketing and channel strategy roles, most recently as Microsoft’s Asia Pacific SMB business senior director responsible for its partner ecosystem in that region.

Rackspace competes for partners with cloud providers Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) so fine-tuning its channel program is vital.

In a blog post, Knight said he’s “charged with streamlining Rackspace’s partner program to ensure our partners get the most out of it.” He said “2014 is a big year for our Partner Network as we sharpen our partners’ expertise in the hybrid cloud to assist them in becoming cloud specialists.”

Knight said Rackspace is eager to adjust its program to the needs of its channel partners, tailoring its offerings to partners’ specific business models both with financial incentives and other benefits.

“Our enhanced Partner Network means that our partners choose the activities that are the best fit for their specific needs,” he wrote. “It also means they’re rewarded more easily for their efforts.”

In particular, Rackspace plans to offer partners a specialization program surrounding OpenStack, the hybrid cloud and managed virtualization and specific workloads such as ecommerce, web content management and mobility, Knight said. In fact, Knight told Talkin’Cloud in an interview that Rackspace will be actively recruiting partners whose strengths lie in those specialties.

“As specialists ourselves, Rackspace can support partners through technology shifts and changes,” he wrote. “This means they focus less on their infrastructure and the technologies involved, and more on the solutions they’re building for their customers. Our partners and their customers want high-performance, low-latency and no-downtime solutions, and we’re here to provide that for them.”

Longtime Microsoft (MSFT) executive Antoine Leblond, a 25-year company veteran and head of Windows Services, said he will exit after March 31, to “go out and see what the non-Microsoft world has to offer,” as he told colleagues in an email.

Leblond spent 20 years in Microsoft’s Office unit, mostly working with ex-Windows boss and former star Steven Sinofsky, who was unceremoniously shown the door in November 2012, less than a month after shepherding the company’s momentous Windows 8 launch. Leblond’s departure comes only two days before the start of Microsoft’s Build 2014 conference, where he previously has presented to attending developers.

It also follows the earlier exits of two other veteran execs, Jon DeVaan and Windows testing head Grant George, both of whose fortunes waned when the company shuffled management last year. All three executives noticeably were not included on the leadership list resulting from the One Microsoft reorganization last year, which left Terry Myerson in charge of Windows.

“Every single day I have had here has been amazing in its own way, and I will never look back on all of these years with anything but fondness, pride in what we’ve accomplished together, and a real appreciation for having been lucky enough to be part of so many awesome things,” Leblond said, as reported by Re/code. “I am sad to leave all of you, but also incredibly excited for what comes next.”

Leblond’s leaving closely follows word of the impending departures of Business Development and Evangelism Executive Vice President Tony Bates and Marketing Executive Vice President Tami Reller, and a move by 20-year company veteran Julie Larson-Green from Devices head to chief experience officer (CXO) in executive vice president Qi Lu’s Applications and Services Engineering Group, ostensibly to make room for incoming Nokia (NOK) chief Stephen Elop.

Larson-Green, who was passed over when Myerson was promoted to Windows head last July, earlier had taken over Windows software and hardware engineering in the wake of Sinofsky’s removal.

At the time of George’s and DeVaan’s leaving, some inside the Windows unit criticized Microsoft for shelving two experienced executives who could have helped Myerson make the new organization work. Now with Leblond’s exit, the post-Sinofsky makeover is complete.

Symantec’s (SYMC) board of directors abruptly ousted President and Chief Executive Steve Bennett, whose tenure at the security company’s helm lasted a short but eventful 20 months, replacing him on an interim basis with board member Michael Brown, a former Quantum (QTM) boss.

Bennett, who took previous chief Enrique Salem’s job in July 2012, vowed to streamline operations, prune midmanagement’s ranks and reframe the company around a more succinct mobility and security lineup. He apparently took the hit for Symantec’s sliding revenue, sagging share price and sluggish delivery of new products. In addition to handing over his titles, Bennett also resigned his position on the board.

As a side note, Salem now is a member of Symantec rival FireEye’s (FEYE) board of directors. FireEye is among a growing number of younger security vendors challenging Symantec’s conventional approach, aiming instead at intrusion detection and prevention.

Symantec said it has appointed a special committee of the board to collaborate with an executive search firm to find Bennett’s successor.

Board chairman Daniel Schulman said Bennett’s firing did not result from any one event or behavior but stemmed from what he termed “an ongoing deliberative process,” in which he was found lacking on product innovation and growth.

“We recognize Steve’s contributions to Symantec, including developing and leading a series of successful initiatives focused on organizational realignment, cost reduction and process effectiveness,” said Schulman. “These changes have helped establish a solid foundation for Symantec’s future, and we remain committed to our previously announced greater-than 5 percent organic revenue growth and better-than 30 percent non-GAAP operating margin targets by FY17.”

Symantec’s revenue fell 4.8 percent to $1.7 billion for the quarter ending Dec. 27. In tandem with announcing Bennett’s departure, Symantec said it expects sales in the current quarter will slide from $1.75 billion a year ago to between $1.62 billion and $1.66 billion. GAAP diluted earnings per share are expected between 29 cents and 31 cents, as compared to 27 cents in the year-ago period.

Brown, who joined Symantec’s board in 2005 following the Veritas merger, said he will focus on product innovation and growth.

“With recent key hires, we have a leadership team in place that is capable of accelerating our growth and I look forward to working closely with them to help execute the next phase of the company’s transformation plan,” he said.

“The need for protecting and managing your information has never been stronger, and we must act aggressively to capture a growing share of this market,” Brown said. “By concentrating on product innovation and growth initiatives, we aim to leverage Symantec’s tremendous assets across both consumer and enterprise applications to enhance our position as a market leader.”

On Bennett’s watch, Symantec last April rolled out Symantec 4.0, its new customer-focused sales strategy with an increased emphasis on channel partners. Under the revamped sales model, field reps are incented to work with channel partners with more resources invested in business development activities and enablement.

Justin Moore, Axcient chief executive, defended Bennett’s performance at Symantec’s helm.

“When Bennett announced his vision for Symantec 4.0, which was announced less than a year ago, he made the right choices—for the most part,” Moore said in an email. “Yet, Symantec was already too far behind the cloud/SaaS curve to catch up. A change of this magnitude is impossible in less than three to five years.”

Moore said Symantec’s problems extend beyond Bennett’s control. “Like so many other enterprise software companies, it has struggled to transition to the enterprise cloud world proving that it is indeed a systemic issue that goes far beyond Bennett’s control.”

Aruba Networks (ARUN) has named former Avaya channel exec Karl Soderlund to its Worldwide Channels position. The announcement was made at Aruba Atmosphere, the company’s annual partner conference this week in Las Vegas.

As vice president of Worldwide Channels, Soderlund will be responsible for all things channel-related, including recruitment, developing global alliances and managing Aruba’s international distribution structure for partner training, enablement, and pre-sales support, according to the company. He reports to John DiLullo, executive vice president of Worldwide Sales.

Soderlund is a fixture in the channel space, having most recently led Americas channel sales at Avaya. He’s also held channel-related positions at Cisco Systems (CSCO), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Fortinet (FTNT) and Extreme Networks—all similar in the fact they all are networking companies (or, in the case of HP and Fortinet, have a networking bent). To that end, Soderlund should be an excellent fit at Aruba.

DiLullo noted as such in his prepared comments: “[Soderlund’s] broad networking technology experience and proven track record for developing first-rate sales and channel programs, coupled with his passion for motivating teams to deliver best-in-class support and drive sales, will be key assets as we grow our worldwide channel organization.”

It’s unclear whether Jim Harold, Aruba’s vice president of Channels, is still at the company. However, his LinkedIn profile hasn’t changed—a good sign. I’m totally speculating (until I get confirmation) that if he is still at Aruba, he’ll be reporting to Soderlund.

(Update: Jim Harold is still at Aruba, overseeing North American channels. He does, indeed, report to Soderlund.)

Word has it Soderlund is getting his feet wet in the warm Aruba waters (figuratively, of course) here at Atmosphere. I, too, will be wading in and hopefully will get the chance to sit down with Soderlund and talk shop.

Four months after departing Microsoft (MSFT), former channel chief Jon Roskill now is at the helm of Acumatica, a 7-year-old, cloud-based ERP specialist focused on SMBs.

Roskill, a 20-year, high-profile Microsoft channel veteran, takes Acumatica’s top spot immediately from outgoing chief executive Yury Larichev. He said the ERP market’s potential and Acumatica’s commitment to sell exclusively through the channel attracted him to the position.

Privately held Acumatica is on a growth spurt, last year posting a 350 percent year-over-year revenue spike, doubling its channel roster to north of 270 partners and landing customers such as e-Recycling and Youngevity, according to the company.

Can Roskill position Acumatica to compete with Microsoft and other ERP heavyweights?

“I’m here and I’m ready to make some impact,” he said. “I love being an underdog and taking the bigger guys on. It’s time Acumatica made its stamp on ERP history. Bring it on.”

Roskill pegged the ERP market as a $60 billion opportunity, and said his entry into the segment comes at the right time.

“It’s a market worth $60 billion, so capturing even just 1 percent of that revenue is incredible. It’s time the stodgy, old ERP scene got a shakeup,” he said.

Larichev, who will remain on Acumatica’s board as an advisor, is expected to stay through March to ease Roskill’s transition. “I’m happy to have taken Acumatica this far,” he said. “Since I joined, Acumatica has seen tremendous growth, and this will continue under Jon’s leadership. He is the right person, at the right time, for Acumatica. I’m excited to see him take Acumatica to new heights.”

At Microsoft, Roskill most recently ran the vendor’s Worldwide Partner Group, a unit consisting of some 5,000 employees overseeing a partner network of 640,000 providers. In prior roles, he was responsible for Microsoft’s U.S. Business Operations, Strategy and Marketing, and served as general manager of the Server and Developer Tools Division.