Channel roundup: Who's gone where?

The past couple of weeks have continued to see movement across the industry, with some deeming it not only the right moment for a fresh start, but for a new venture too.

Lenovo

The firm has made a couple of senior appointments with Ian Jeffs, becoming Lenovo Data Centre Group (DCG) general manager for the UK and Ireland, and Mark Hiley, taking up the position as DCG channel sales leader.

Jeffs returns to the vendor after a 12-year break and was part of the team that established the PC business in the UK. He has also worked at Tech Data, Arrow and IBM.

Hiley joins from NCR and has worked with the channel before in positions at Riverbed and Dell EMC.

“We are very excited to welcome two outstanding leaders at an important moment for the Lenovo UK DCG business, as we work to ensure our customers and partners needs are at the centre of everything we do, driving intelligent transformation and a smarter future together,” said Giovanni Di Filippo, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) president of DCG at Lenovo.

“Our ambition is to double the market share for DCG group in the UK and Ireland market in the next two years – a task requiring strong leadership and significant sector knowledge.”

Nebulon 

Going slightly further than just recruiting new staff, the team behind the cloud storage player have decided the time is right to form a fresh business. The business has been launched by a group of former 3PAR executives with the aim of shaking up the market.

“Organisations are increasingly demanding a more cloud-like experience for their most critical on-premise applications,” said Siamak Nazari, co-founder and CEO of Nebulon.

“Cloud-defined storage delivers global insights, artificial intelligence-based administration and application programming interface-driven automation making enterprise-class storage a simple attribute of the datacentre fabric, with self-service infrastructure provisioning and storage operations as-a-service for application owners.”  

Exertis   

The distributor has announced the promotion of Jo Lawrence to UK human resources (HR) director, reporting to Paul Bryan, managing director for Exertis UK and Ireland.

She takes up the position previously held by Nick Foster, who took on the additional responsibility as HR director for Exertis International earlier last year.

Lawrence joined the business in November last year from Mutual LV, where she had spent a couple of years as head of HR for talent, learning and resourcing. Prior to that, she spent more than 15 years at the Kingfisher Group in senior HR positions within the PLC and its DIY and home improvement retailer, B&Q.

“It’s been great to join such a fast-moving and dynamic business and so quickly have the opportunity to progress and take on a wider remit. Exertis is a company which fosters an inclusive culture and really empowers its people, providing fantastic prospects for both business and personal growth. I’m delighted to join the board at such an exciting time for the business,” said Lawrence.

Komprise  

The data management player has given Clare Loveridge the chance to make a difference as the vice-president of EMEA sales. Loveridge comes with more than 20 years of sales and channel management experience, and was most recently in a senior leadership role at ExaGrid and prior to that Cloudcheckr, Nimble Storage and Data Domain.

“I’m looking forward to working with the sales team and helping them to ensure they continue to understand the customers’ businesses and the challenges they are looking to overcome, to continue driving continued momentum for Komprise in EMEA,” she said.

Automation Anywhere   

The RPA specialist has appointed former Dell staffer Chris Riley as the firm’s chief revenue officer. In this role he will oversee global sales and managing a 1,900 strong partner ecosystem.

Riley was most recently at Dell Technologies Select where he served as president of global sales, but also has time on the CV at HPE and EMC.

“Chris is a world-class executive who brings with him a wealth of experience to align sales, marketing and operations that will further accelerate our growth trajectory,” said Mihir Shukla, CEO and co-founder of Automation Anywhere.

“I am excited to have a leader of his calibre join us to deliver value for our company by expanding revenue and market share, while ensuring our customers have continued success, particularly as they look to implement a digital workforce to maintain key business processes during the global pandemic.”