Juniper Confirms Microsoft's Umeoka As New Worldwide Channel Chief

CRN reported initial details of Umeoka's new role Thursday night. He will report to John Morris, executive vice president, field operations at Juniper.

"Umeoka's proven international experience strengthens our executive leadership team and brings tremendous business value and street credibility to Juniper's global channel organization and the thousands of partners we do business with worldwide," said Morris in a statement. "Under Umeoka's leadership, we plan to build on the success of our worldwide partner organization and ensure best practices, programs and resources are shared throughout our global Juniper Partner community."

Umeoka has been in the IT industry for more than 25 years, and before Microsoft, where he became the software giant's Asia Pacific president in 2006, he founded and ran a Brazil-based VAR and also had Latin America-based executive roles with Compaq and Microsoft.

The worldwide channel chief position at Juniper has been vacant since May 2010, when Frank Vitagliano moved out of the role and stepped into a new position as senior vice president of partners, the Americas, to focus on Juniper partnerships in the Americas region.

Umeoka's appointment at Juniper is part of a recent executive hiring blitz by the networking company; Juniper this week also named Microsoft's Brad Brooks as its new vice president of worldwide enterprise marketing and solutions; Brooks was formerly vice president of Windows Consumer Marketing and Product Management at Microsoft.

Juniper also nabbed Luanne Tierney, former vice president of marketing for the Worldwide Partner Organization at Cisco, naming her as its new vice president, global partner marketing.