Here are some of the latest executive hirings, promotions, and staff changes. If you’d like SDxCentral to report on your company’s movers and shakers, or if you’ve got a tip about layoffs and restructuring, please send the information to Sydney Sawaya ([email protected]).
Juniper CTO Bikash Koley Calls It QuitsJuniper Networks former CTO Bikash Koley is out, and the company hired Raj Yavatkar as the new CTO.
The networking company first announced Koley’s resignation in a Nov. 27 filing with the U.S. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It said Koley would remain in his current role until Jan. 3, 2020.
Juniper issued a press release that named Yavatkar as CTO and said he will begin his employment at Juniper this month. The press release, however, made no mention of Koley. Neither did an emailed statement sent to SDxCentral from a Juniper spokesperson: “Mr. Yavatkar is anticipated to join the Juniper team in December, and we look forward to his technical thought leadership and vision as he helps us lead the next era of innovation at Juniper,” it said.
In his role at Juniper, Yavatkar will report to CEO Rami Rahim.
Nokia Kills COO Role Amid StrugglesNokia is heading into the next decade with a smaller C-suite. The Finnish vendor, which has faced some pricing and supply-chain challenges and recently slashed its profit outlook through at least 2020, has discontinued its COO role and announced that Joerg Erlemeier, who currently holds that position, will leave the company after a 25-year run on Jan. 1.
Nokia said it will distribute the various COO functions to other leaders within the company. The reorganization of the company’s uppermost ranks is noteworthy because it reinforces the prevailing opinion that some significant changes must be made for Nokia to overcome its challenges.
COOs are effectively second in command and typically groomed to take over as CEO, so the move puts some distance between CEO Rajeev Suri and his potential replacements. But there’s no sign that Suri’s 24-year run at the company is coming to an end soon.
“Succession planning is fraught with challenges,” but Nokia’s “bench strength seems strong and diverse,” said Will Townsend, senior analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.
Nokia’s removal of the COO position is the latest in a handful of executive moves made by the vendor. Earlier this year it lost Chief Legal Officer Maria Varsellona, who had served in that position since mid-2014. Nokia moved her functions to other executives.
Van Wyk Replaces Wheelus at AT&TRyan Van Wyk has replaced Amy Wheelus as VP of network cloud at AT&T. Van Wyk previously served as assistant VP of network cloud engineering at AT&T, and has spent several years working in the carrier's cloud division.
Wheelus has taken on the role of VP of broadband and video systems at AT&T.
Headcount: Movers and ShakersData lake engine provider Dremio welcomed former Pure Storage marketing executive Jason Nadeau as its VP of marketing.
Extreme Networks named Pete Doolittle SVP of Americas sales. Doolittle previously led the global SD-WAN sales team at Cisco Systems.
Qualcomm announced the appointment of Akash Palkhiwala as EVP and CFO. Palkhiwala had been serving as interim CFO since August. Previously, he was SVP and finance lead for Quanta Cloud Technology (QCT).
Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) provider Crowd Machine promoted COO James Hanley to CEO of the company while founder and former CEO Craig Sproule assumed a new role as chairman. Sproule will continue to lead the company’s visionary technology innovation.
MemSQL expanded its executive leadership team with three new hires: Roman Bartik as VP and GM of cloud; Domenic Ravita as field CTO; and Aaron Shoffa as head of OEM sales.
Colt Technology Services appointed Gary Carr as its new CFO. Carr previously held several leadership roles across BT Global Services and Siemens.
Online verification company Veriff hired Guy Zerega as SVP of sales where he will be responsible for building the company’s global sales organization and business expansion. Zerega previously served as EVP of revenue at Stack Overflow.
Drew Frogley joined Leia as VP of sales and marketing. Frogley formerly served as director of worldwide B2B sales at Apple.
New York-based edge computing IoT platform provider Octonion welcomed Vianney Airaud as CRO.
LogRhythm hired Cindy Zhou as the company’s CMO and Michael Jones as VP of product.
Jason Gosnell, formerly of Apple and Nokia, was named CTO at UrsaLeo.
Packet appointed former VMware executive Gary Green as its CRO. Green most recently served as SVP of worldwide sales and services for Puppet.
Jeff Jennings joined vArmour as SVP of engineering. The company also announced Rich Noguera as VP and head of security.
Qumulo welcomed Michael Cornwell as its CTO. Cornwell previously served as Microsoft’s GM of storage technologies for Azure infrastructure, and led innovation and adoption of new memory and storage across the Azure platform and services.
Technical skill assessments platform HackerRank announced Jennifer Stagnaro as its CMO.
Postman named VP of Marketing Nick Tran to its executive leadership team and Kin Lane as chief evangelist.
Nutanix named Tarkan Maner its new CCO. Maner most recently served as chairman and CEO at Nexenta Systems, leading the organization through its acquisition by DataDirect Networks in May.
Jacqueline Woods joined Nielsen as CMO. Nielsen previously served as CMO for IBM's partner ecosystem.
DataOps platform provider StreamSets welcomed Judy Ko as chief product officer, Suzy Tighe as VP of global marketing, and promoted Jobi George from VP of business development to GM of its cloud business.
HashiCorp appointed Susan St. Ledger to its board of directors. St. Ledger, who serves as president of worldwide field operations at Splunk, will join HashiCorp as its first independent board member.
Chronicle co-founder and Chief Security Officer Mike Wiacek broke the news on his personal blog that he had left Google after more than 13 years.
Former Veritas and Hitachi Data Systems executive Michael Cremen was appointed CRO at Cohesity.
Dish Network named Marc Rouanne as chief network officer and Stephen Bye as chief commercial officer. Rouanne previously served as president of mobile networks at Nokia, and Bye was most recently CEO of Connectivity Wireless.
Dell Technologies named Jeff Clarke as its COO and vice chairman. Clarke previously served as vice chairman of products and operations at the company. Dell Technologies also announced CCO Marius Haas’ retirement from the company at the end of the fiscal year. Bill Scannell will lead global sales following Haas’ departure.
The OIF Network Operators Working Group announced election results for its board of directors and working group representatives:
- Nathan Tracy, TE Connectivity — re-appointed as president
- Tad Hofmeister, Google — re-elected (two-year term) and re-appointed as VP
- Martin Bouda, Fujitsu — re-appointed as secretary/treasurer
- Ian Betty, Ciena — re-elected to the board (two-year term)
- Mike Li, Intel — re-elected to the board (one-year term)
- Cathy Liu, Broadcom — re-elected to the board (one-year term)
- Gary Nicholl, Cisco — continues to serve on the board
- Ed Frlan, Semtech — technical committee chair
- Klaus-Holger Otto, Nokia — technical committee vice chair
- Lyndon Ong, Ciena — re-elected as market awareness and education committee co-chair, networking
- Richard Ward, Intel — appointed by the board as market awareness and education committee co-chair, PLL (filling the vacant position)
- Dave Brown, Nokia — continues to serve as director of communications
- Junjie Li, China Telecom — re-elected as network operator working group chair.
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