Mitel Names Channel Chief, New Senior Leadership To Pursue And ‘Win’ UCaaS Opportunities

Mitel has named Daren Finney as its first-ever senior vice president of global channel sales. The company has also added new leaders in Cloud Operations, Channel Sales, Service Delivery and Market Intelligence.

Unified communications provider Mitel has brought on former Citrix chief operating officer Daren Finney as senior vice president of global channel sales, a brand-new role designed to strategically support Mitel’s diverse global channel, the company told CRN.

Mitel is making moves to help partners tackle the ever-growing cloud opportunity. In addition to bringing on a VP of channel sales, the company has added new leaders in cloud operations, channel sales, service delivery and market intelligence, Mitel announced on Tuesday.

The Partner Enablement team led by Lana King, vice president, partner programs, training and enablement, will now move under Finney’s global channels sales organization.

[Related: Mitel Launches Two New Partner Programs Targeting MSPs, Agents: Exclusive]

No stranger to the channel, Finney comes to Mitel from Citrix, having most recently served as the company‘s COO. Prior to that, he was Citrix’s vice president of EMEA partner sales and services. Finney also held leadership positions at Symantec, Lenovo and CA Technologies.

In his new role with Mitel, Finney will expand on the company’s current goals it has in place to go after the cloud opportunity and win in the UCaaS space with partners, he told CRN in an email.

“My goal is to ensure that Mitel continues to deliver a world-class approach to partnerships,” he said. “Of course, execution will be key so that Mitel consistently provides our partners with the products, services, and expertise they rely upon us to help them win.”

The good news, according to Finney, is that Mitel already had several partner initiatives and new programs in place to build out its channel focus on cloud and subscriptions.

“We continue to see the significant transition from our customers as they accelerate their journey into the cloud,” he said. “We will … continue to work alongside our customers and partners to support them at whatever stage they are at in their own cloud and subscription journey.”

Also joining Mitel is tech executive Carlton Geckler, who is bringing his two decades of experience managing cloud adoption and transformation for companies such as HERE Technologies and Nokia to the company. Geckler is coming in as senior vice president, global cloud operations for Mitel, where he will work to ensure the reliability, performance, and architectural innovation of Mitel’s multi-tenant UCaaS cloud operations.

Joining Mitel as vice president, customer success, is business executive Marina de la Torre who has delivered multi-million dollar revenue growth through strategic solutions for startups and Fortune 500 companies across multiple industries. de la Torre Comes to Mitel from FastSpring and MINDBODY Inc., where she held senior-level customer success positions. Her new role with Mitel, she’ll be in charge of Mitel’s customer success department focused on delivering communications experiences centered around customer outcomes, according to Mitel.

With more than two decades of software engineering and business systems development in the tech and telecom industry, Mohammed Kasmi has come on to Mitel as vice president, research and development – service delivery. In his new role, Kasmi will lead Mitel’s service delivery R&D organization.

Virve Virtanen has joined Mitel as vice president, analyst relations and competitive intelligence. Virtanen has held analyst relations leadership roles at companies such as Poly, Mapbox, Microsoft and Nokia. In her new appointment as leader of Mitel’s Analyst Relations and Market Intelligence initiatives, Virtanen will grow the company’s efforts to closely engage with analysts around the world about Mitel’s strategy, opportunities, and momentum, according to the company.