Extreme Networks Channel Chief Departs For Rackspace

A spokesman confirmed to ChannelWeb that Rajiah, Extreme's director of North American channels and a 10-year veteran of the company, will likely assist Extreme in a limited capacity during the transition in its channel ranks, but for all intents and purposes has left.

"We really enjoyed working with Chris, thank him for his commitment and many accomplishments, and wish him the best in the future," said the spokesman.

Extreme also confirmed it has named Rich Long to Rajiah's former job, director of North American channels, and added channel responsibility to the role of Dick O'Hara, presently Extreme's director of strategic alliances and now also in charge of Extreme's national business partners.

Neither Rajiah nor Rackspace could be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon, and it wasn't clear Tuesday what Rajiah's specific role at Rackspace will be.

Rackspace, which according to the spokesman is a customer of Extreme Networks, just this month introduced its first formal channel partner program for hosted and cloud services.

According to his Extreme Networks bio, Long joined Extreme in 2008 as its director of North American distribution, following several executive positions at distributor ScanSource's Catalyst Telecom division.

O'Hara, who as director of strategic alliances is already in charge of Extreme Network's business development and its "Go Purple" alliance program, was previously director of strategic alliances at Avaya and held channel management roles at Avaya, Cisco, Motorola and other companies.

Rajiah spearheaded a sweeping overhaul of Extreme's partner program in 2008, and despite Extreme's financial difficulties in the past year, its channel management was spared in an October restructuring that eliminated 70 positions from the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company.

Extreme is also still in the process of interviewing candidates for its CEO job following the October departure of Mark Canepa. Bob Corey, a former Extreme board member and chief financial officer, has been serving as interim CEO since then.

In a recent ChannelWeb interview, Extreme chairman and co-founder Gordon Stitt told ChannelWeb that he was very actively involved in the CEO search and that Extreme in 2010 would seek to better align its products and channel efforts to take advantage of the convergence of networking and the data center.