Carousel Industries Nabs Verizon Vet For Soaring Partner Program

Solution provider Carousel Industries has hired Verizon veteran Jim Barrucci to its newly created position of Verizon Program Director, a part of the company’s rapidly growing agent partner program.

“The opportunity at Carousel is the sky is the limit,” Barrucci told CRN. “Carousel Industries has a tremendous reputation for all facets of their business and Verizon program was front and center in my mind and such a huge opportunity for the company. Carousel Industries has put a lot more focus on Verizon this year, and I would anticipate we’re going to see that grow throughout the remainder of this year and years to come.”

Carousel’s agent partner program – which allows solution providers to bundle and resell Carousel’s technology solutions and carrier services – has experienced 1,500 percent annual growth rate since it was launched in April 2017, the company said.

“Carousel’s Agent Partner Program is experiencing stronger than anticipated demand in areas such as unified communications, collaboration, cloud and security from solution providers nationwide who are leveraging our total solutions offerings, comprehensive back office and project management support and our 25-year track record in delivering superior customer experience,” said Tim Kennedy, Carousel’s Vice President of Carrier Services in a statement. “We continue to make major investments in all aspects of our Agent Partner Program and adding Jim Barrucci to our team underscores our commitment to channel growth and client partnerships.”

Barrucci spent his first five years at Verizon selling direct, and then moved to work in Verizon’s channel program. For the past 15 years, his job included working on the company’s reborn partner program where Barrucci served as a recruitment manager, and assisted in rebuilding and restructuring the program.

“I have been brought onboard to simplify the Verizon relationship,” Barrucci told CRN. “After spending the last 15 years of my career as a channel manager, or in the channel in support of partners, I tend to know the ins and outs of the Verizon program really well and I know a bunch of the folks out there who like to sell it. As far as recruiting and on-boarding and bringing people to the Carousel partner program and support them successfully is one of my primary tasks.”

Exeter, R.I.-based Carousel Industries -- a leader in communication and network technologies, professional and managed services, and cloud solutions – is a Verizon Platinum Partner. In his new role, Barrucci will report to Kennedy.

“There are some different things that Verizon requires as far as how they run their program,” Barrucci said. “Having had that experience, and having lived through it on the vendor side, to migrate to the partner side now gives myself and the team at Carousel, the ability to support the Carousel team in a way that is much more hands on, much more experienced, and is a lot more focused on our partner relationships.”

With the agent partner program, Carousel offers a range of managed services through its technology partners – including Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft and Verizon – to address the rising demand for carrier services, managed services, hosted, cloud, security, collaboration, unified communications and data infrastructure solutions.