Avaya U.S. Services Chief Jumps To Top VAR

Jenine Johnson, most recently Avaya's sales vice president, U.S. services, has taken an executive operations role at Strategic Products and Services (SPS), a Parsippany, N.J.-based solution provider and one of Avaya's biggest national VAR partners.

Johnson is now SPS' vice president of services and operations, reporting to COO Jim Felicetti and based in Atlanta. SPS confirmed her move Tuesday, as well as a new assignment for Vel Johnson, who moved from Jenine Johnson's role to become SPS' vice president of sales. Vel Johnson shares leadership of SPS' overall sales apparatus with Jim Maynard, vice president of sales and marketing.

Jenine, a 25-year technology veteran, has deep ties to Avaya and its precedents. She had been at Avaya since it was founded in 2000, serving as vice president, sales operations, then vice president, U.S. services sales. Earlier in her career she spent four years at Lucent Technologies and more than a decade at AT&T.

[Related: 10 Key Events in the Avaya Channel This Year ]

Her most recent role at Avaya focused on growing services sales, including renewal and point-of-sale attached rates. At SPS, Johnson's focus will be professional services and growing the VAR's services footprint overall.

"The steadfast focus on consultative insight, innovative solutions and strategic offers has positioned SPS as an industry leader," Johnson said in a statement e-mailed to CRN. "I am proud to become a part of this great team."

As one of Avaya's top U.S. VARs and a Platinum partner, SPS has been particularly active in the consolidation of the Avaya channel following Avaya's 2009 acquisition of Nortel's former enterprise business unit. SPS acquired three fellow, nationally known Avaya partners in the past year and a half: Consultedge in August 2010, Spenser Communications in February 2011 and Imagine Technologies in December 2011.

Johnson's move follows a trend of longtime vendor executives taking positions with the VARs that partnered with them. Back in November, Paul Cantwell, a former LifeSize, Tandberg and Avaya channel chief, became senior vice president of worldwide sales at Optivor Technologies, an Avaya Platinum partner based in Annapolis Junction, Md.