SonicWall Shuffles Sales Execs

As part of the reorganization, Mike Valentine, former vice president of channel sales, was named vice president of America Sales, reporting to John DiLullo, vice president of worldwide sales. Zach Yarnes, who has been director of intercontinental sales management, will assume the newly created position of director of worldwide field operations, also reporting to DiLullo.

In addition, Mark Richter, former head of Cisco Systems’ sales productivity field operations in North America and Latin America, will take the new position of SonicWall’s director of inside sales for the Americas, reporting to Valentine.

Due to the nature of the restructuring, it’s unclear at this time whether Koepsel will be replaced, a SonicWall spokesperson said. Koepsel, who joined SonicWall in February 2005, declined to comment.

Solution providers said he played an important role in developing SonicWall’s highly regarded channel program.

“Lief was an embodiment of SonicWall’s values as a channel-loyal company,” said Oli Thordarson, president of Alvaka Networks, Huntington Beach, Calif. “Lately, they have been reaching out to the channel more than they ever have, and I’d like to see them continue to do that with the channel programs they have in place.”

Koepsel oversaw last year’s rollout of TotalSecure bundles, which help partners address the unified threat management market with a combination of a firewall and VPN appliance with a one-year subscription of gateway antivirus, antispyware, content filtering, intrusion prevention, firmware updates and support during regular business hours.

In an interview at SonicWall’s partner conference last month, Koepsel talked about leveraging SonicWall’s SMB focus. “There’s a convergence going on in which the SMB space is getting hot, the security business is getting hot, and managed services are getting hot. … We now have the ability to build sales on the excitement,” he said.