30 Notable IT Executive Moves: April 2014

Start It Off

April was showered with plenty of high-profile executive moves, from management team shakeups at NetApp and more departures from Juniper Networks to big channel chief changes at Kaspersky, Red Hat and Rackspace. Let's take a look.

Dan Warmenhoven

NetApp last month shook up its management team with several high-profile moves, starting with the departure of Chairman and former CEO Dan Warmenhoven, a 20-year veteran and longtime leader of the storage firm. Warmenhoven will remain on NetApp's board of directors until September, when he plans to retire. He served as president and CEO of NetApp from 1994 to 2005, and then as CEO until 2009. Before joining NetApp, Warmenhoven served as chairman, CEO and president of Network Equipment Technologies. Prior to that, he served as general manager of HP's Information Networks group and also spent more than 10 years at IBM in a variety of management roles.

Tom Georgens

Replacing Dan Warmenhoven as chairman of NetApp is Tom Georgens, the company's current CEO. Georgens, who succeeded Warmenhoven as CEO in 2009, also gave up the role of president at NetApp. He joined NetApp in 2005 as executive vice president and general manager of Enterprise Storage Systems. He was later named as president and COO in 2008. Before NetApp, Georgens spent nearly 10 years at Engenio in several senior executive roles, including CEO. Prior to Engenio, he worked at EMC for more than a decade in engineering and marketing positions.

Robert Salmon

Replacing Georgens as president of NetApp is Robert Salmon, who was also named as head of go-to-market operations. Salmon will be responsible for global marketing, customer success operations and field operations He most recently served as executive vice president of worldwide field operations. He joined NetApp in 1994 as a sales executive and took over the storage vendor's global field operations in 2004. Before NetApp, Salmon worked in sales at Sun Microsystems and Data General Corporation.

Vic Gundotra

Google's "social czar" Vivek Gundotra resigned from the company last month as senior vice president for social. In a post on his Google+ page, Gundotra said he was ready for "a new journey" but has not revealed what that will be. Gundotra spent nearly eight years at Google, which hired him away from Microsoft, where he worked as general manager of Platform Evangelism; Google waited a year for his non-compete agreement to expire before officially hiring him in 2007. Google Vice President of Engineering David Besbris has taken over Gundotra's duties.

Luanne Tierney

Luanne Tierney, head of partner marketing at Juniper Networks, left the company following a series of budget cuts to the networking vendor's marketing organization. She said she plans to write a book on best practices and strategies for young women in the workforce. Tierney spent two years at Juniper as vice president of global partner marketing. Before that, she served as vice president of worldwide partner marketing at Cisco for nearly three years. Before that, she spent more than 10 years at Cisco in several senior channel marketing roles.

Christopher Doggett

Kaspersky Lab promoted its channel chief Christopher Doggett to the role of managing director of Kaspersky Lab North America. Doggett previously served as senior vice president of corporate sales for North America. He joined Kaspersky in 2012 as vice president of North American channel sales. Prior to that he served as executive vice president and COO at Financial Recovery Technologies and worked at Sophos for several years in a variety of channel roles, including vice president of global channels.

D. Robert Martin

Open-source software maker Red Hat named D. Robert Martin as its new North American channel chief. As vice president of North American partner sales, Martin will lead the company's channel strategy. He previously served as vice president of global indirect channel for VCE, the converged infrastructure firm backed by VMware, Cisco and EMC. Before that, Martin worked at Cisco for many years and held top channel positions.

Rajeev Gupta

Juniper Networks lost another top executive as Rajeev Gupta joined Big Switch Networks as the SDN vendor's first-ever head of worldwide channels. Gupta most recently served as director of worldwide channels and partner development at Juniper, where he spent more than six years. Before Juniper, he worked at Fortinet as director of global business development and alliances. He also held management positions at Altera and LSI Logic.

Shaun Page

Big Switch Networks also hired ex-Juniper Networks executive Shaun Page as vice president of worldwide sales. Page most recently served as vice president of strategic accounts at Juniper, where he spent 13 years. During that time, he also held several partner management roles, including vice president of worldwide service provider alliances. Before joining Juniper in 2002, Page worked at Unisphere Networks as country manager for Australia and New Zealand.

Will Knight

Rackspace Hosting added ex-Microsoft executive Will Knight to its executive team as the cloud company's vice president of channel partner sales. Knight spent more than 15 years at Microsoft, most recently serving as senior director of Microsoft's Asia-Pacific small and medium business. He also worked as head of Microsoft's cloud sales and geographic expansion for Asia-Pacific. Before joining Microsoft in 1999, Knight worked at energy provider Southern Company in SMB marketing roles.

Condoleezza Rice

Cloud storage and file sharing vendor Dropbox named Condoleezza Rice to its board of directors. Rice, who served as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, previously served as provost of Stanford University and served on the boards of Hewlett-Packard and Charles Schwab. Dropbox was hit with protests from users who objected to Rice's appointment to board.

Dennis Woodside

Dropbox also tapped ex-Google executive Dennis Woodside as its new COO, in which he'll lead the company's global business operations for sales, marketing and partnerships. Woodside most recently served as CEO of Motorola Mobility and served president of the Americas at Google during his 10-year career at the company. Before joining Google in 2003, Woodside worked at McKinsey & Company as an associate principal.

Tony Prophet

Microsoft added former HP executive Tony Prophet to its leadership team as corporate vice president of Windows marketing. Prophet most recently served as senior vice president of operations for HP's Printing & Personal Systems Group and led supply chain operations for the group for several years. Before joining HP in 2006, he served as senior vice president of operations at Carrier. He also held top executive roles at Honeywell and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Sanjay Deshmukh

VMware added Citrix Systems veteran Sanjay Deshmukh to its executive team as head of its end user computing business in Asia-Pacific and Japan. Deshmukh most recently served as area vice president of India for Citrix. Before joining Citrix in 2010, he served as vice president of SAP's business user and platform group. He also held management positions at Informix and Tata Infotech.

Benoit Dupin

Amazon executive Benoit Dupin left the cloud computing giant to take a new, as-yet-unnamed position at Apple. Dupin most recently served as vice president of search technology at A9, an Amazon subsidiary focused on search and online advertising technology. According to reports, Dupin will serve in a management role focused on Apple's search products, including Maps and the App Store. Before joining A9 in 2007, he spent many years at HP and served as an R&D project manager and as a software engineer.

Bobby Hollis

Apple also named Bobby Hollis to its executive team as senior renewable energy manager. Hollis most recently served as vice president of renewable energy and origination at electric company NV Energy, where he spent five years. Before that, he served as associate general counsel at Invenergy and worked as an attorney for Alliant Energy. Hollis is the second major executive Apple has added to its team for environmental operations in the past year; the company hired Lisa Jackson, former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, last May as vice president of environmental initiatives.

Anna Griffin

CA Technologies appointed former Juniper executive Anna Griffin as its new senior vice president of corporate marketing. Griffin most recently served as vice president of global marketing at Juniper, where she worked for five years. Previously, she served as director of global branding and advertising at Nortel Networks. She also worked at advertising agency McKinney and systems integrator MarchFirst.

Rajeev Suri

Nokia has a new leader. The company, which sold off its mobile phone business to Microsoft last year, named Rajeev Suri as president and CEO. A longtime veteran of Nokia, Suri has served as CEO of Nokia Siemens Network (NSN), the former joint venture between Nokia and Siemens (now fully owned by Nokia). He also served as head of global services at NSN and senior vice president of Asia-Pacific at Nokia.

Eric Herzog

Violin Memory named former EMC executive Eric Herzog as chief marketing officer and senior vice president of business development. Herzog previously served as senior vice president of marketing and communications at EMC for three years. Before that, he was vice president of marketing at Tarmin and vice president of marketing and operations at Asempra. Prior to that, he held marketing roles at Encirq and senior executive roles at Maxtor.

David Cuthbert

Unified communications firm Alteva shook up its management team by ousting President and CEO David Cuthbert, saying the management change was instituted to improve profitable growth. Cuthbert had served as president and CEO for a year. He first joined the company as COO in 2006 and was later promoted to the role of president. Alteva created the Office of the CEO to replace Cuthbert, which includes several existing Alteva executives, on an interim basis.

Jay Conn

Alteva also ousted Jay Conn, who previously served as COO of the unified communications company. Conn spent more than two years at Alteva, joining the company as executive vice president and COO. Before that, he served as an independent consultant for such companies as KMC Software and spent five years at Verid, where he served as senior vice president of operations.

Joe Hayek

Amid a potential takeover bid, PCM saw its president of sales step down. Joe Hayek, who served the company for six years, departed PCM and took a position as vice president of M&A and corporate development at Worthington Industries. He joined PCM in 2008 as executive vice president and previously served as senior vice president of Raymond James. PCM recently saw 5 percent of its stock purchased by Firoz Lalji, chairman of PCM rival Zones.

Rick Osterloh

Amid its sale to Lenovo, Motorola Mobility named Rick Osterloh as its new president and COO. Osterloh replaces former Motorola Mobility executive Dennis Woodwise, who became COO of Dropbox. Osterloh previously worked as senior vice president of products for the company. Prior to that, he served as vice president of product management and design at Skype and vice president of product and marketing at Good Technology.

Harish Krishnamurthy

Insight Enterprises named IBM veteran Harish Krishnamurthy as senior vice president of cloud services, where he'll help the solution provider drive its new cloud strategy. Krishnamurthy spent 15 years at IBM, most recently serving as vice president of sales for the Systems & Technology Group. He first joined IBM in 2000 and held several vice president and senior management positions at the company. Prior to that, he held a management position at A.T. Kearney.

Matt Kolon

Brocade named Matt Kolon to the role of chief technology officer for Asia-Pacific, where he'll lead the networking company's technology development and product road map for the region. Kolon comes to Brocade from Cisco, where he worked as CTO for service providers in Asia-Pacific and managing director for Cisco's Evolved Programmable Network business in the region. Before that he spent more than a decade at Juniper Networks, including vice president of service providers in Asia-Pacific.

Marco Vergani

E-commerce company Digital River tapped IBM veteran Marco Vergani as general manager and vice president of Europe, Middle East, and Africa, where he'll oversee the company's sales, marketing and operations in the region. Vergani spent 25 years at IBM, most recently serving as vice president of sales for IBM's global process services in Europe.

Harry Labana

Cloud and virtualization startup CloudVolumes tapped former Citrix executive Harry Labana as senior vice president and chief product officer. Labana most recently served as chief technology officer and vice president of product management at AppSense. Before that, he served as CTO and vice president of Citrix's desktop division. Prior to joining Citrix, Labana served spent several years as a vice president at Goldman Sachs.

Mark Hansinger

Oki Data Americas promoted Mark Hansinger to role of U.S. channel chief. As vice president of U.S. channel sales, Hansinger will lead the company's indirect sales strategy. He previously served as director of U.S. channel sales for Oki Data Americas. He also served as director of U.S. distribution and other positions at the vendor. Prior to Oki Data, Hansinger served as vice president of sales and marketing for Paris Business Products.

Jim Phillips

Storage vendor SavageIO named former Dell executive Jim Phillips to the role of senior systems engineer, where he'll lead product development and performance optimization of Savage IO technologies. Phillips previously served as senior systems engineer at Dell, where he spent more than two years. Before that, he worked at One Communications as director of technical services and IT operations.

Pam Nicastro

Catalogic Software hired IT veteran Pam Nicastro as vice president of worldwide sales. Nicastro most recently spent three years at NetApp, where she worked as director of sales. Prior to that, she served as regional vice president for enterprise sales at Oracle. Nicastro also spent many years at Sun Microsystems in a variety of positions, including as director of education and health-care sales in North America.