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Channel roundup: Who’s gone where?
As January chugs on, the appointments continue to rack up across all tiers of the channel
January chugs on and the appointments in the channel continue to rack up. As is usually the case, the reason for these latest moves is to support growth ambitions. Some of the roles are fresh, but many of the faces are familiar and well known to the channel.
ECS
The IT consultancy has hired former HPE executive Mark Farrington as managing director of its cloud business. He was previously HPE Pointnext UK and Ireland vice-president and general manager at HPE.
Farrington’s mission will be to help ECS reach the £125m revenue mark and keep the growth coming on the cloud front.
“ECS is recognised by many in the UK retail banking sector as the go-to company for complex transformation programmes,” he said. “With a large team focused on helping customers move their core business to the cloud, and our work on possibly the most advanced deployment of Amazon Connect in the world, I see myriad growth opportunities to help large organisations transform their IT.”
UKFast
The cloud specialist has appointed Catherine Greening as chief financial officer (CFO) with a mandate to oversee the firm’s five-year growth plan.
She has been with UKFast for the past five years as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) director, and was involved with the recent investment from Inflexion Private Equity.
“As M&A director, I was more focused on one-off projects designed to add value, such as the acquisition of S-IA. The move to CFO sees me far more involved in the day-to-day operations of UKFast, working more closely with the other directors to drive business performance,” she said.
Sennheiser
Neil Watson has moved from Plantronics to join Sennheiser as regional marketing manager for the UK and Ireland.
In his previous role he managed channel marketing communications, and hence has plenty of knowledge of the UK reseller scene.
“His track record speaks for itself, and we are certain that, with his experience, allied to our new introductions in 2019, we are going to have a fantastic year ahead marketing with our partners,” said John Craven, sales director, enterprise solutions, at Sennheiser UK.
Barac
The cyber security startup has brought Peter Christou on board as its first executive vice-president of global sales. He will be looking to ramp up sales at a time when the firm has expanded into the US with a Boston office.
Barac founder and CEO Omar Yaacoubi said it was able to find malware hidden in encrypted traffic: “More than 80% of all corporate traffic is now encrypted, driven by the increased adoption of cloud services, IoT [internet of things] and onerous compliance requirements, such as GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation].
“Growth in the use of encryption represents a huge problem for organisations. Existing cyber security solutions leave organisations vulnerable to malware attacks because they are simply unable to protect against threats hidden in encrypted traffic.”
Ivory Egg
The intelligent home specialist has appointed Sue Milne as managing director, with a brief to increase the market share for the KNX building control player.
“Ivory Egg already offer a superb portfolio of products and solutions that enable them to provide the most suitable solutions to their customers, and I will be working hard with the team to back that up with unrivalled service and support,” she said.
Milne’s short-term tasks will be to meet with customers and suppliers to make sure each group is getting the most out of the relationship that Ivory Egg is delivering.
