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 Wyatt Carlson ([email protected]).

As the timeframe narrows on CenturyLink’s acquisition of Level 3 Communications, CenturyLink has made additional executive leadership changes. Although current Level 3 President and CEO Jeff Storey will join CenturyLink as its president and CEO, Glen Post is expected to remain CEO of CenturyLink until January 1, 2019.

However, CenturyLink is lining up a new executive team that will report to Storey while he serves as CenturyLink COO until he takes over from Post. After the acquisition closes, there will be five business units and new leaders of each unit that will operate under Storey.

Edward Morche rejoined Level 3 where he will be president of the strategic enterprise, federal government and state government unit; Laurinda Pang will serve as president of global accounts management; Vernon Irvin will be appointed to president of its small and midsize business, local government and education unit; Lisa Miller will be president of the company’s wholesale and indirect group; and Maxine Moreau will be president of the consumer unit.

All of these executives come from the Level 3 side of the soon-to-be combined company except Moreau who is president of consumer markets at CenturyLink and Vernon Irvin who is SVP of small- and mid-sized markets at CenturyLink.

In order to support these business units and integration processes, CenturyLink appointed a number of its own existing executives to lead support groups. Aamir Hussain will serve as EVP and be responsible for IT. Clay Bailey was named SVP of transformation and integration where he will lead the integration of the two companies. Richard Batelaan will be EVP of North America operations. Storey has yet to name a marketing executive.

Some other CenturyLink executives are leaving or retiring. Bill Cheek, president of wholesale at CenturyLink is retiring shortly after the acquisition closes. Dean Douglas, president of sales and marketing at CenturyLink is leaving the company at the close of the transaction. And Girish Varma, president of global IT at CenturyLink is also retiring when the deal closes.

As Swedish Telecommunications equipment vendor Ericsson dives deeper into its cost-reduction plan, Leif Johansson, chairman of its board of directors said that he will not make himself available for re-election at the annual shareholder’s meeting next year. He’s served as the company’s chairman since 2011.

“Borje Ekholm assumed the position as CEO in the beginning of the year, and during the first quarter the company presented a new, more focused business strategy,” Johansson said in a prepared statement. “This strategy, which is supported by the Board and the major owners, creates a solid foundation for realizing Ericsson’s full potential…It is natural to let the owners jointly propose a chairman.

Part of the company’s new business strategy includes gaining a tighter focus on its efforts with telco clients and networks. It is pulling back on its previous work in expanding its operations into other areas like media and utilities.

Ericsson’s nominating committee has initiated a search for a replacement.

Intel reportedly laid off 140 workers from its Internet of Things (IoT) business. The company let go nearly 100 workers at its Santa Clara, California, headquarters, according to the Silicon Valley Business Journal. The other 40 job cuts came from one of its offices in Leixlip, Ireland, The New York Times reported.

Specifically, during June Intel quietly discontinued three of its IoT product lines including the Joule, Edison, and Galileo compute modules and boards. These product lines provided users with processing power to incorporate into manufacturing systems, wearable technology, drones, and other IoT applications.   

The Irish IoT group, known as the Quark group, had the lead on Galileo and Joule. Edison was overseen by Intel’s IoT group in Santa Clara.

The job cuts come as a bit of a surprise as Intel has aggressively been growing its IoT business. During its fourth quarter earnings call, company executives said IoT revenue was up 15 percent to $17.2 billion for the year, and in the fourth quarter alone it brought in $726 million. At the time, its business was driven by the video, retail, and industrial segments.

The Open Compute Project hired Archna Haylock as its new community director. She will be responsible for managing membership, collaboration, and governance processes.

Juniper Networks brought on former Brocade executive, Marcus Jewell as SVP and general manager of it Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) business.

On-premises cloud provider ZeroStack appointed David Greene as the new CEO, succeeding ZeroStack Co-Founder Ajay Gulati who will remain with the company as CTO.

Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) vendor TELoIP hired Michael Gagnon as the company’s new VP of sales.

Data center networking company Big Switch Networks welcomed Claudio Perugini to the company as VP of worldwide channels.

The CEO of ARM Holdings, Simon Segars, was approved to join SoftBank’s board of directors. Additionally, Sprint’s President and CEO, Marcelo Claure, was elected to SoftBank’s board of directors.

Network performance company Accedian Networks appointed former Group CTO of Vodafone Group Steve Pusey; former VP for IBM Software and Systems Steve Mills; and former EVP at CA Technologies Peter Griffiths to its board of directors.

Telecom software company CENX named Edward Kennedy as its new president and CEO. Kennedy succeeds interim CEO Kim Butler, who will pick up her previous position as CFO of the company.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) promoted Antonio Neri to president, which is a newly created position for the company. Neri previously served as EVP and GM of HPE’s enterprise group. 

Puppet promoted Tim Zonca from head of product marketing to VP of worldwide marketing. The company also promoted Tanya Webb to the newly created position of senior manager of diversity and inclusion.

Former VP of enterprise applications with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Gene Farrell, joined software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor Smartsheet as its SVP of product.

The President and CEO of NTT Singapore Takeshi Kazami resigned on June 30 and was replaced by Naoki Wakai on July 1. Wakai was formerly deputy managing director for NTT Europe.

Laxmi Akkaraju was appointed as the CSO of GSMA. Akkaraju most recently served as SVP of global delivery at EVRY, and Norwegian information technology company.  

Southwest Airlines announced that is SVP and CIO Randy Sloan is leaving the company in mid-July. Kathleen Wayton, who is currently the airline’s VP of corporate delivery, operations, and reservations, was promoted to fill his role.

Prevoty appointed Sharon Vardi to the role of CMO. Before joining Prevoty, Vardi was CMO at Securonix, a security analytics company.

To help build and grow its partner programs, security vendor Demisto named former VP of partnerships Bob Kruse as its new VP of alliances.

Performance monitoring company Gigamon hired Burney Barker to serve as SVP of worldwide sales where he’ll oversee both direct and indirect sales teams.

Electric Cloud added Nicole Forsgren and John Willis to the company’s advisory board. Forsgren is currently the CEO and chief scientist at DevOps Research & Assessment (DORA) and Willis is a container and DevOps expert and has worked with companies like Dell, Opscode/Chef, and Canonical/Ubuntu.

Isabelle Paradis, the current president of Hot Telecom, was picked to serve on Cataleya’s board of directors.