Polycom Shakes Up Management
Polycom announced the addition of six business executives to its leadership team.
Polycom announced the addition of six business executives to its leadership team. The company also announced the combination of its video, telepresence, and voice development units into a single, aligned research and development organization to tap the potential of the high-growth unified communications market.
With the alignment, Polycom will be forming three new lines of business—enterprise and government/public sector, service provider, and small-to-medium business—focused on meeting the unique needs of customers in each of these technology sectors, company officials said.
Executive joining Polycom are:
Joseph Burton, SVP, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer, General Manager Enterprise and Service Provider. Burton served as Cisco’s CTO for Unified Communications since 2007, encompassing video technologies, WebEx collaboration, call management, and social computing.
Sudhakar Ramakrishna, SVP and General Manager Products, and Chief Development Officer. Ramakrishna will join Polycom on October 11 from Motorola where he is corporate VP and GM for Wireless Broadband Access Solutions and Software Operations. Ramakrishna has been instrumental in scaling the 4G (WiMAX and LTE) business.
Susan Hayden, EVP and General Manager, Polycom SMB. Hayden was group vice president of Sales for OracleDirect, where she transformed the unit into a fast-growing SMB/mid-market revenue engine for Oracle. .
Alan Rudolph, SVP, Global Services. Prior to Polycom, Rudolph served as senior vice president Applications Management and Consulting for Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), a Xerox Company, where he played a key role in transitioning the company to a services-focused organization.
Gary Rider, President, Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). Rider will complement Polycom’s existing Theater Presidents in the Americas and Asia Pacific. Previously, Rider was vice president of Europe Global Sales & Marketing for NCR.
Ashley Goldsmith, SVP, Human Resources. Goldsmith comes to Polycom from F. Hoffmann-La Roche, where she was senior vice president of human resources for their Tissue Diagnostics Division.
“Polycom grew sharply in the first-half of 2010 to a $1.2B revenue run-rate, and we expect this growth to continue into 2011 and beyond,” said Andy Miller, Polycom president and CEO, in a statement. “Unified communications is expected to be one of the fastest-growing sectors in technology and Polycom is positioned to deliver innovative solutions for our customers and strategic partners. To best capture this unprecedented opportunity, we have assembled a management team that is one of the best in technology. By blending the video and voice development teams into one powerhouse UC innovation engine, we will further increase our agility and enable efficiencies in R&D.”
Polycom also announced that Joe Sigrist, previously senior vice president and genera manager of video solutions, has left the company.
