Cloud networking specialist Aviatrix hires a slew of new leaders, including several former Cisco executives, with the goal of doubling down on ‘solving the toughest cloud networking security challenges,’ says CEO Doug Merritt.
Cloud networking standout and Cisco Systems competitor Aviatrix has hired two former Cisco executives and several other new leaders as the company revamps its channel program with the aim of taking sales growth to the next level.
Ken Horner is Aviatrix’s new CRO and has had a vast executive IT career working for Cloudflare, Flexera, Splunk, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Cisco. He spent years at Cisco with his last role at the company as global solutions leader for Cisco’s Cloud Software and Infrastructure.
Horner was most recently head of Americas enterprise sales for Cloudflare before joining Aviatrix this month. At Cloudflare, Horner spearheaded nearly 100 percent year-over-year growth for two consecutive years in the enterprise segment.
“The companies that appeal to me are revolutionary, not evolutionary,” said Horner in a statement. “Analysts have recently reported that Aviatrix is that rare type of company—scoring extremely high on innovation and moving quickly. I’m thrilled to be joining the company to further scale its growth.”
[Related: Aviatrix CEO Doug Merritt On Relaunched channel Program And Goal To Include Partners In 100 Percent Of Transactions]
Horner previously worked with current Aviatrix CEO Doug Merritt when Merritt was CEO of Splunk.
Aviatrix Hires Former Cisco AppDynamics Executive, Says ‘Hyper Growth’ Ahead
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Aviatrix also hired Mark Anthony as its new vice president of global business value.
Anthony spent nearly five years at Cisco’s AppDynamics, with his last role as director of value consulting for the Americas region. After AppDynamics, Anthony spent a year with JFrog as global director of JFrog’s value practice before joining Aviatrix in January.
Scott Leatherman also was appointed Aviatrix’s new CMO. Leatherman worked for over 12 years at SAP with his last role as COO for SAP Labs US and global vice president of marketing. He joined Aviatrix last year as Merritt’s chief of staff.
“Aviatrix is solving the biggest challenges facing enterprises today, like IP exhaustion, Azure NAT [Network Address Transalation] gateway policy changes and infrastructure modernization with zero-trust cloud networking,” said Leatherman in a statement. “With a customer base of over 500, that includes 10 precent of the Fortune 500 and strong VAR, ISV and CSP partners, Aviatrix is poised for sustained hyper growth.”
The new hires come as Aviatrix is relaunching its channel program and putting partners at the center of its strategy to capture more share in the $30 billion cloud networking market.
“As part of this relaunch, it’s really almost a relaunch of the company,” Merritt told CRN last month. “We’re changing the way that we talk about ourselves with much more specific use-case-driven frameworks for problems that we solve, that, hopefully if we’ve done our job, are deeply tied to key business priorities that CIOs have as they’re continuing to work their way through their cloud journey and their new hybrid landscape.”
Other New Aviatrix Hires
Aviatrix also recently hired Russ Gould as its new vice president of growth marketing. Gould has a history in top marketing roles at Veritone, Guidance Software, Billtrust and Kofax.
Aviatrix also recently hired former ServiceNow director Denise Oliver as its new vice president of revenue operations. Oliver spent over eight years as ServiceNow, including in top senior director sales positions along with financing executive roles at Stripe, Lacework and EMC.
Another former Splunk executive who previously worked for Merritt is Richard Vienna, who is now Aviatrix’s global vice president of strategic accounts. Vienna has previously held top strategic account positions at HP Inc. and Quest Software.
Looking at all of his new hires, Merritt said, “With Ken, Scott and the rest of our new leadership team, we’re in a prime position to double down on solving the toughest cloud networking security challenges, innovate, scale and create meaningful value for our customers and partners.”
Above photo from left to right: Ken Horner, Doug Merritt and Scott Leatherman.
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