30 Notable IT Executive Moves: May 2017

Start It Off

This past month saw a huge number of executive changes in the IT industry, which we've narrowed down to the 30 biggest moves affecting the channel.

Companies with changes at the CEO level in May included Rackspace, Ruckus Wireless, Veeam and DLT Solutions. Meanwhile, companies with changes in their channel leadership ranks during the month included Palo Alto Networks, Datadog and Cohesity. Other firms with executive moves in May included Samsung, Intel, Symantec and Optiv.

In the following slides, check out our picks for May's 30 most significant executive moves in the IT industry.

Selina Lo

Selina Lo, the CEO of Ruckus Wireless since 2004, departed the company at the end of May. The departure followed the sale of Ruckus to Brocade Communications in May 2016 for $1.2 billion -- and the news that Ruckus will again change hands later this summer, ultimately coming under the ownership of Arris.

Lo oversaw the growth of Ruckus into a nearly $400 million wireless vendor, and led the company through its IPO in 2012 -- and more recently through a period of change and uncertainty. "Her DNA has been firmly instilled into Ruckus, which has enabled Ruckus to survive such upheavals and transitions in the last 24 months," said Gary Berzack, CTO and COO of longtime Ruckus partner eTribeca.

Brocade said that Lo is entering retirement. Ruckus COO Dan Rabinovitsj will helm the Ruckus business unit inside Arris.

Prior to Ruckus, Lo was vice president of marketing and product management for Alteon Websystems, which went public in 1999 and sold to Nortel in 2000 for $7.8 billion.

JD Sherry

Optiv Security's vice president of cloud security and strategy, JD Sherry, has departed to take a position at startup Remediant. Sherry will now serve as chief revenue officer at Remediant, which specializes in privileged account management.

Optiv did not respond to requests for comment on Sherry's departure or if there is a replacement for leading the company's cloud security business.

Sherry had joined Optiv in February 2016, as part of the company's push to add executives around different vertical and technically specialized practices. He joined Optiv from security startup Cavirin, where he was CEO.

Joe Eazor

The former CEO of EarthLink, Joe Eazor, has been appointed the new CEO of Rackspace.

Eazor will officially begin his tenure running the cloud hosting and managed services provider on June 12, according to a statement from Rackspace. He succeeds Taylor Rhodes, who stepped down as CEO of Rackspace in May.

Previously, Eazor had led EarthLink for three years, through the telecommunications provider's acquisition by Windstream at the end of last year. Prior to that, Eazor ran global sales and customer operations for nearly two years at EMC.

John McCormack

The former CEO of Forcepoint, John McCormack, has joined Fidelis Cybersecurity as its new interim president and CEO.

McCormack previously served as CEO, president and senior vice president of product development for Websense, and helped lead the $1.9 billion sale of Websense to Raytheon in 2015. He continued to head the company as part of Raytheon and through its rebranding as Forcepoint.

McCormack succeeds Peter George, who had been CEO of Fidelis Cybersecurity since May 2015. A Fidelis spokesperson said George will continue to be involved with the company in an advisory capacity.

John Gray

Cloud monitoring provider Datadog has named John Gray, formerly of competitor New Relic, as its senior vice president of alliances. Gray will lead the company's channel partnerships business and will have some business development responsibilities as well.

Gray has more than 20 years of experience in software/SaaS sales and in building channel initiatives, previously working for companies including IBM and Oracle. He most recently had run global business development at New Relic.

Matthew Brennan

Computex Technology Solutions has tapped Matthew Brennan, the president of managed security provider VirtualArmour, to lead its sales charge. The appointment of Brennan as senior vice president of sales signals Computex's intent to significantly expand its security vendor partnerships and services offerings, CEO Frank Vitagliano told CRN.

Brennan started as an account executive at VirtualArmour six years ago and was named vice president of sales in 2015. He became president of the company 10 months ago. Under his sales leadership, VirtualArmour grew its managed services business 70 percent over three years.

Brennan's hire is the first major appointment by Vitagliano since he took the helm at Computex in January.

Gregory Bryant

Intel has promoted Gregory Bryant as the new general manager of the Client Computing Group.

Bryant, who has worked at Intel since 1992, was previously leading the strategy and product development for Intel's Connected Home and Commercial Client businesses.

He takes over for Navin Shenoy, who left the Client Computing Group to become general manager of Intel's Data Center Group. That position had become open because the former Data Center Group head, Diane Bryant, is taking an extended leave of absence from Intel.

Todd Palmer

Palo Alto Networks channel chief Todd Palmer, who was key in revamping the security vendor's partner program last year, has left to join hyper-convergence startup Cohesity.

Palmer spent the past three years as Palo Alto Networks' vice president of Americas channel sales, responsible for driving the company's partner and sales strategy for thousands of partners.

Palmer is now the new vice president of worldwide channels at Cohesity. In April, Cohesity raised a $90 million Series C round from backers including HPE and Cisco.

Palmer has been succeeded by Karl Soderlund, formerly of companies including Imperva and Aruba Networks.

Karl Soderlund

Palo Alto Networks has hired channel veteran Karl Soderlund to run its Americas channels organization, where he's expected to play a key role in evolving the company's NextWave Channel Partner Program. Soderlund is replacing Todd Palmer, who left to join hyper-convergence startup Cohesity.

Previously, Soderlund served as group vice president of worldwide channels and alliances for unified communications specialist 8x8. Prior to that, he was the global channel chief for cybersecurity vendor Imperva.

Other positions have included vice president of worldwide channels and alliances at Aruba Networks, as well as vice president, Americas channel sales for Avaya.

Chris Jones

Network management and control vendor Infoblox has hired former Polycom executive Chris Jones as its new vice president of worldwide partners.

Jones will be responsible for leading the company's global partner organization, and working closely with its sales teams to grow its business through partner programs and initiatives.

Jones joins Infoblox from Polycom, where he was president of the Americas sales and global partner organization, and responsible for more than half of the company’s revenue. Before Polycom, Jones ran the partner organization and commercial sales for Juniper Networks, as well as the global partner organization for Cisco WebEx.

Derrell James

RingCentral has brought aboard a new senior executive, Derrell James, who was previously responsible for nearly $2 billion worth of business at Avaya.

James, who brings more than 30 years of experience, will serve as RingCentral's new senior vice president of professional services.

James spent nearly three years at Avaya, serving as that company's senior vice president of global strategic services. Prior to that, he held leadership positions at EMC and Perot Systems.

Art Richer

DLT Solutions has named longtime immixGroup executive Art Richer to be its next CEO. The firm is bringing Richer aboard to drive growth in cloud, cybersecurity and big data analytics.

Richer will replace Alan Marc Smith, who departed in April after two years in the CEO position.

Richer previously spent 18 years at immixGroup, joining the company a year after its inception as a vice president, and ascending to the role of president in 2007. He took over as immixGroup's CEO in November 2013, and spearheaded the company's sale to Arrow Electronics in March 2015.

Hardik Shah

CompuCom has hired a veteran of Lenovo and Gartner, Hardik Shah, to serve as its new chief strategy officer. Shah replaces Greg Hoogerland, who has moved into the newly created role of chief customer officer.

Shah told CRN that he plans to accelerate CompuCom's expertise around mobility, personalization and infrastructure management, with an emphasis on the retail, financial and health-care verticals.

Before joining CompuCom, Shah spent two years at Gartner as vice president of product management. Earlier, he was with Lenovo for seven years--in areas that included leading the company's systems integration business in Asia-Pacific and heading up go-to-market strategies in emerging economies.

Jim Kruger

Cloud business application provider Intermedia has named the former top marketing executive at Polycom, Jim Kruger, to drive hosted VoIP sales and facilitate expansion into the United Kingdom and Australia.

Kruger will serve as chief marketing officer at Intermedia. Previously, he spent 16 years at Polycom. As CMO for the past four years, he had overseen a $60 million, 160-employee marketing operation.

Kruger replaces senior vice president of marketing Eric Weiss, who left Intermedia in October to take the CMO job at digital wealth management firm Personal Capital.

Brad Tompkins

Endpoint management software company IGEL has tapped Brad Tompkins to lead its channel charge as vice president of sales for North America.

Tompkins has a long history of selling cloud and managed open-source software solutions to enterprise customers. The sales executive previously worked as an area manager at Red Hat's strategic sales team, as well as at Hewlett Packard and Citrix.

Sean Foster

Forcepoint has named cybersecurity sales veteran Sean Foster as its chief revenue officer. The Raytheon-owned company said Foster will be responsible for driving its global sales and channel organizations.

Previously, Foster had served as vice president of global sales at HPE Security since June 2015. Before that, he held a variety of roles at Symantec over 15 years, including as the company's vice president of Americas Emerging Sales Solutions.

Raj Mallempati

Malware prevention and remediation specialist Malwarebytes has hired two executives to fill newly created positions.

The firm has hired Raj Mallempati, who was previously the vice president of global marketing at MobileIron, as its first senior vice president of marketing. Malwarebytes has also brought aboard Elena Verna, formerly the senior vice president of growth at SurveyMonkey, as its first senior vice president of growth.

The new executives will help "to drive our company’s growth immensely over the next few years," Malwarebytes CEO Marcin Kleczynski said in a news release.

Tim Baxter

Samsung Electronics has expanded the role of executive Tim Baxter as part of changes to its North American leadership team.

Baxter, who was named president and chief operating officer of Samsung Electronics America in 2015, is now serving in an expanded role as of president and CEO of Samsung Electronics America. In the role, he will "oversee all aspects of SEA including sales, marketing and operations across product categories," the company said in a news release.

Gregory Lee will continue to serve as president and CEO of Samsung Electronics North America, and "will continue to focus on the strategic needs of the company and its subsidiaries," Samsung said.

William Largent

Veeam Software said that CEO and board member William Largent is moving to a new role within the company, as chairman of the Finance and Compensation Committees.

Succeeding Largent as CEO are two executives -- president/chief operating officer Peter McKay and CTO/co-founder Andrei Baronov -- who will serve as co-CEOs.

McKay, a veteran of companies including VMware, joined Veeam last June. He will head up the company's go-to-market, finance and human resources functions. Baronov will oversee R&D, market strategy and product management functions, and will remain as CTO of the company.

Marianne Budnik

CyberArk has named Marianne Budnik, a former SimpliVity and CA Technologies executive, as chief marketing officer.

Budnik previously served as CMO of SimpliVity, recently acquired by HPE, and before that was CMO of Acme Packet, acquired by Oracle. Earlier, she held the CMO position at CA, and prior to that held various senior leadership roles at EMC. "Marianne brings tremendous technology industry experience and insight earned from working with a range of organizations at different stages of growth and maturity," said CyberArk CEO Udi Mokady in a news release.

Chris Bream

Tanium has hired former Facebook executive Chris Bream as chief technology officer. Bream assumes a role that had previously been part of the responsibilities of Tanium co-founder/CEO Orion Hindawi since the start of the company in 2007.

For the past three years, Bream had worked at Facebook overseeing the product security, infrastructure security and information security policy and risk teams. Prior to that, he was a director at Mandiant.

Michael Berg

SonicWall has named a new executive to its worldwide sales and channel team, Michael Berg, who will serve as senior director of channel sales with a focus on Europe. Berg will "enhance the company’s strong relationships with the European channel and enable SonicWall to deepen its relationships with distributors," the company said in a news release.

Berg was previously channel director at encrypted communications firm Silent Circle, and before that served as vice president of project management at distributor ASBISc Enterprises. Earlier, he spent 15 years at Tech Data in roles in Germany and Switzerland.

Ann-Marie Johnson

Unisyshas hired government technology expert Ann-Marie Johnson as business development executive for serving the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Previously, Johnson served as vice president of civilian business development at ASI Government, and before that held various roles at Computer Sciences Corp. She has also served at government-industry group ACT-IAC as the industry co-chair of the Acquisition Transformation Project.

Michael Tarbet

SaaS-based performance monitoring firm LogicMonitor has appointed industry veteran Michael Tarbet as its vice president of sales. "Michael Tarbet is a seasoned leader with an extensive track record of aggressively building high-performing organizations across industry verticals and geographies," LogicMonitor CEO Kevin McGibben said in a news release.

Tarbet had most recently served at UnboundID, which was acquired by Ping Identity. Earlier, he held sales executive roles at companies including Oracle and RightNow Technologies.

Jeff Nolan

Adaptive access control vendor SecureAuth has hired Jeff Nolan as its first chief marketing officer.

Previously, Nolan held marketing executive roles at companies including NowSecure and Ping Identity. Earlier in his career, he spent a decade in venture capital at SAP Ventures. Nolan "is an industry insider with direct experience to bring visibility to the critical issue of identity security," SecureAuth CEO Jeff Kukowski said in a news release.

Druce MacFarlane

Network intrusion detection and prevention startup Bricata has added two executives to its management team.

Druce MacFarlane will serve as vice president of products and marketing at Bricata, which he joins from McAfee. There he had assisted the company with its business transition during its spinoff from Intel. Earlier, MacFarlane held positions in product management and marketing leadership for companies including FireEye, Aruba and Netscout.

Randy Fallis will serve as vice president of sales and customer strategy at Bricata. Previously he had run North American sales at Cybereason, and before that he held positions at companies including Rapid7 and Oracle.

Frank Mong

Hortonworks has named former Palo Alto Networks executive Frank Mong as its chief marketing officer.

At Palo Alto Networks, he had served as senior vice president of product, industry and solutions. Before that Mong held the position of vice president and general manager of solutions for the HP Enterprise Security Products organization. Earlier, he served at companies including Silver Spring Networks, Trend Micro, Symantec and SonicWall.

Kristen Cunningham

PlanetOne Communications has named former Computer Sciences Corp. executive Kristen Cunningham as director of solution sales for its Southern California Region.

Most recently, Cunningham had served as strategic account director at Neustar, and before that as channel alliance manager at CSC. Earlier, she was director of Alliance & Partner Channel at NTT America.

Aarij Khan

Security analytics and predictive threat detection firm Securonix has added two executives to its leadership team.

Aarij Khan has come aboard as vice president of marketing, following positions at cybersecurity companies including Imperva, ArcSight (acquired by HP) and Tenable Network Security.

Mel Shakir has joined Securonix as vice president of product development. Previous positions had included holding the role of chief technology officer at RippleTech and NitroSecurity.

Christopher McDaniels

Cybersecurity services provider and consultancy Mosaic451 has named Christopher McDaniels as chief information security officer.

McDaniels, a U.S. Air Force veteran, brings more than 14 years of cyber operations experience defending enterprise networks, Mosaic451 said. Most recently, he served as Chief of Adversary Cyber Integration and Chief of Training of the US Air Force Red Team. "Having a leader of Chris's caliber greatly enhances our ability to provide the best cybersecurity services to our clients," Mosaic451 managing director Mike Baker said in a news release.