30 Notable IT Executive Moves: March 2012
January and February were busy months as far as IT executive movers and shakers were concerned and March continued that trend, with some big announcements out of HP, Google and RIM -- and the departure of a major, well-known channel chief -- topping the list of notables.
Here's a look at 30 of the biggest IT executive moves in March, from all over the industry.
Things have gone from bad to worse and worse to even worse at Research In Motion (RIM), which at the end of March reported weak fourth-quarter earnings and confirmed the resignation of board member and former co-CEO Jim Balsillie. Thorstein Heins, who took over as CEO from Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis in January, already is starting to make the types of "seismic changes" he previously had said RIM would avoid. "I am convinced that substantial change is what we need," he told financial analysts.
Speaking of companies undergoing substantial change, look no further than HP, which is combining its printer and PC businesses and, as a result, will bid adieu to one of its long-running, best-known senior executives. That would be Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of HP Imaging and Printing Group (IPG), a 31-year-veteran, who will step aside once the groups are combined. IPG and PSG, which HP flirted with selling or spinning off last year, will become the Printing and Personal Systems Group and be run by current PSG head, Todd Bradley, executive vice president of the unit.
Joshi's pending exit isn't the only change HP has in store at a corporate level. The computing giant also confirmed that Dave Donatelli, currently executive vice president of HP's channel-crucial Enterprise Servers Storage and Networking (ESSN) business, will head HP's Enterprise Group, a newly formed unit that consolidates HP's global accounts sales organization, the current ESSN structure, and HP Technology Services. Global sales Executive Vice President Jan Zadak will take a new, as-yet unspecified role with the company as a result. HP's marketing efforts and communications efforts are also consolidating across business units, coming under Marty Homlish, chief marketing officer, and Henry Gomez, executive vice president and chief communications officer.
A changing of the guard in one of the most visible channel chief roles in security: Randy Cochran, Symantec's vice president of channel sales, Americas, resigned in mid-March after eight years heading Symantec's partner program. He left the company officially as of March 31 and has been replaced by John Eldh, a seven-year Symantec veteran and most recently vice president of sales for Symantec's cloud products.
Bami Bastani is the executive tasked with leading virtualized wireless LAN ace Meru Networks into its next phase. Bastani was announced as Meru's CEO in mid-March, nearly six months after departing CEO Ihab Abu-Hakima said he would be moving on once a successor was found. Bastani, who started at Meru immediately, most recently was president and CEO of Trident Microsystems, a specialist in digital television and entertainment chips and set-top boxes, and before that was president and CEO of Analdigics.
Logitech is emerging from a challenging year that saw the departure of former president and CEO Gerald Quindlen and four straight profit warnings. A few weeks back, however, it named a new chief in Bracken Darrell, former president of Whirlpool EMEA, who will join Logitech as president effective April 9 and is expected to succeed Logitech Chairman and acting CEO Guerrino De Luca in January 2013.
Those familiar with the security channel certainly know Christopher Doggett, who was named vice president of channel sales at Kaspersky Lab in mid-March. Doggett, who most recently was executive vice president of sales for Financial Recovery Technologies, was a former global channels vice president at Sophos, and he now reports to Nancy Reynolds, senior vice president of corporate sales, North America. Kaspersky also hired Chris Gaebler as vice president of business-to-consumer marketing and Jean Lozano as vice president of business-to-business marketing.
VoIP and hosted services specialist Broadvox has a new leader in Bruce Chatterley, who was confirmed as president and CEO in mid-March. Chatterley is well known in the telecom space for his years at MegaPath, where he was president of business markets following MegaPath's merger with Covad and Speakeasy, where Chatterley had been CEO, in 2010. Outgoing Broadvox CEO Andre Temnorod will continue as chairman of Broadvox's board.
The breakup of the webOS team HP acquired when it bought Palm in 2010 continues. But unlike former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, Sam Greenblatt, most recently CTO of the webOS unit, is staying with HP. HP spokespeople told reporters that Greenblatt is moving to a still-undefined new role within the company and is assisting the webOS team as HP prepares to open-source the software.
Chris Lynch, a well-known figure in the big data community, left HP in mid-March about a year after joining the computing giant through its acquisition of business intelligence vendor Vertica, where Lynch had been CEO. Lynch is said to be planning investments in big data-related start-ups as his next move.
Another HP exit: John Renfro, a vice president in HP's human resources team, left the company for AECOM Technology -- a move confirmed in early March. Renfro had shifted from Disney to HP six years earlier and initially was in charge of hiring for HP's Imaging and Printing Group.
Russell Rosa, a 15-year Cisco veteran who most recently was running Americas channels at VCE, left VCE in late February to become vice president of worldwide channels for Waltham, Mass.-based Actifio, a storage virtualization specialist. Rosa told CRN that the market segment represents a $34 billion market opportunity that touches everything from big data to business continuity.
ShoreTel is growing its presence among UC-focused solution providers and the cloud community thanks to its recent acquisition of M5 Networks, but it will solider on without Don Girskis, who confirmed in early March that he will depart the company. Girskis, who was senior vice president, worldwide sales at ShoreTel, has left to pursue philanthropic work -- a long-term goal, he told CRN -- and at press time, ShoreTel had not yet named a replacement.
SAP picked up an executive said to be a thought leader in the collaboration space: Sameer Patel, now global vice president, enterprise collaboration and social software solutions. Patel was most recently with The Sovos Group, a consultancy focused on getting employees, customers and partners to use social and collaboration technologies. He writes an influential technology blog, Pretzel Logic.
Todd Park, who had been CTO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for the past three years, will succeed Aneesh Chopra in the federal technologist job President Barack Obama first created in 2009. Chopra stepped down in late January, several months after formal federal CIO Vivek Kundra left the White House, and Park was confirmed as his replacement in early March.
A lot of Yahoo-related press has centered on executives that are leaving the beleaguered search company, and March was no exception. Bill Shaughnessy, who joined Yahoo following his exit from Microsoft during a 2008 management shakeup, departed Yahoo earlier in March. Shaughnessy was Yahoo's senior vice president of product management. More changes are expected at Yahoo, whose new CEO, Scott Thompson, has hinted about a major restructuring in the works.
It must be tough to leave Google behind, but that's the case for Dave Girouard, Google's vice president of apps, who was confirmed to be leaving in mid-March. Girouard will focus on Upstart, a new fund focused on investments for start-ups that's in part backed by Google Ventures. Girouard had been at Google for eight years.
Digg founder Kevin Rose was confirmed in mid-March to be headed for Google, and also bringing the staff of his start-up, Milk, with him. Rose had left Digg in April 2011 and found Milk, intended as a development lab for mobile Web technologies. Google will now house that development effort, it appears.
Regina Dugan, most recently director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), also is headed for Google. Dugan was confirmed in mid-March for a senior executive position at the search giant, though Google has yet to define exactly what she'll be doing there. Dugan is a renowned expert on counterterrorism and explosive detection systems and has served as DARPA director since 2009.
Wireless LAN upstart Aerohive has been on the move in a big way lately, and as its influence grows among WLAN observers and channel partners, it's also made some marquee hires. Among those was Andrew VonNagy, a former technical architect for Target Corp. and author of the well-known industry blog Revolution Wi-Fi, who became Aerohive's senior Wi-Fi architect in late February.
It's somewhat rare to see a channel executive exit at Juniper Networks, but Blaine Raddon, most recently Juniper's vice president, Americas partner sales, decided it was time to move on. Raddon left Juniper in early March to join data backup and recovery specialist Acronis, where he is now general manager, Americas.
Raddon's departure left an opening in Juniper's channel team, and in came David Bankemper, new vice president, Americas partner sales. Bankemper, who most recently was director of channel sales, now reports to Frank Vitagliano, senior vice president, Americas partners.
Ingram Micro has a new Mobile Business Unit and a new executive to run it: Michael Romero, who was confirmed in mid-March as vice president and general manager for the group in North America. Romero, who joined Ingram in February, previously was a principal at Fluid Group, a marketing services company, and held executive positions at SanDisk and Avnet.
Charter Business confirmed Michael Fair as its new vice president of channel sales and national accounts. Fair, a well-known name in telecom channel circles, previously ran the partner program at One Communications, which was acquired by EarthLink, and spent many years at Qwest. He also founded the consulting firm MarketRace.
10n2 Technologies is a two-year-old start-up that focuses on software to prevent distracted driving. The company, which is about to go live with a channel program, has recruited several former executives from Paetec, including Mario DiRiggi, former Paetec executive vice president of national sales and service, and Donna Wenk, former Paetec senior vice president, sales operations and agent sales. Most of Paetec's former management team moved on following the service provider's acquisition by Windstream last year.
StealthBits Technologies, which makes software for managing Microsoft infrastructure products, hired and promoted a few well-known industry executives in late March. One is Charlie Palella, a former sales manager at United Business Media (publisher of CRN), who joined StealthBits six months ago and is now its vice president in charge of channel business development. Another is Kevin Cancilla, a former director of corporate marketing for Tripwire and now StealthBits' vice president of marketing. The third is Edward Hand, a former Symantec, Quest and Automatic Data Processing executive, who's now StealthBits' vice president of corporate strategy.
There were a few behind-the-scenes changes at Google as a result of its decision to rename the Android market Google Play, including a move by Eric Chu, who will no longer be overseeing the app store. Chu's current role within Google is still being decided, according to sources.
Remote monitoring and management specialist Continuum in early March named Bob Barnes vice president, global service delivery -- a new position through which Barnes will oversee Continuum's network operations center and help-desk services. Barnes, a 20-year technology veteran, previously was global head of technology services and IT security at Celgene Corp., a global vice president at JP Morgan Chase, and a program director for managed services at Siemens.
The executive exodus out of D-Link North America continues, and its latest casualty is Michael Walsh, most recently CIO and vice president of information technology for D-Link North America and D-Link Europe. The swelling ranks of ex-D-Linkers include Nick Tidd, former North America president, Pat Piwowarcyzk, former U.S. enterprise and channel sales chief, and Mark Ciprietti, former vice president and general manager, business solutions division for D-Link Canada and North American Channel DMR.
West Coast videoconferencing solution provider Solutionz Conferencing has deep ties in the video channel and has made several key hires from Polycom in recent weeks. The most recent was George Lillig, a 28-year industry veteran who became Solutionz's vice president of sales, responsible for all sales operations and execution at the company. Since 2009, Lillig had been vice president, U.S. government sales at Polycom, and had previously held positions at Tandberg (later acquired by Cisco), Convergys, Lucent Technologies and Executone. Lillig joins former Polycom Americas boss Thomas "Brad" Johnston, who became Solutionz's COO in February.