Monday Morning Impact – December 19

CompuCom Names New Chief Executive Officer

CompuCom Systems, Inc., the Plano, Tex.-based infrastructure services company, announced that it has appointed Dan Stone as its new chief executive officer.

Stone previously served for two years as EVP and president, End-User Enablement, a role in which he helped IT executives manage the convergence of social interaction, mobility, Big Data and cloud.

Prior to joining CompuCom, Stone served as president and general manager of Lenovo Latin America, a $3B business division, where he led 7,000 employees across 15 countries and two continents, and operated six vertically integrated manufacturing sites. Previously, he was the chief strategy officer at Lenovo, leading the development and implementation of global corporate strategy technology investments, strategic partnerships/alliances, as well as post-merger management activities across the globe.

Stone becomes chief executive officer as CompuCom is accelerating its presence in the automation space, with the planned acquisition of the IoT business of Extensys, a provider of IoT solutions, and the integration of its core team.

CompuCom also recently partnered with intelligent automation leader Arago to integrate Arago’s problem-solving artificial intelligence solution into all of CompuCom’s managed services solutions for the data center.

Don Doctor, who has served as chief executive officer since January 2015, will serve on the company’s board of directors as executive chairman of the parent company board.

Channel Impact^®
As a company insider, Stone is familiar with the company’s team and strategy.

Avnet Expands its Internet of Things Portfolio with relayr Solutions

Avnet, Inc., a Phoenix-based technology distributor, has announced an agreement with relayr to deliver Internet of things (IoT) solutions in the U.S. and Canada.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Boston, relayr offers a cloud platform, consulting services and hardware aimed at enabling an end-to-end development solution consisting of a cloud platform that communicates from Any-to-Any (any service, any software, any platform, any sensor), open source software development kits and industrial-grade sensor kits for rapid customer prototyping. The company principally serves the manufacturing, infrastructure management and retailing verticals.

Through this agreement, partners will have access to relayr’s enterprise middleware platform, and related tools and support.

“relayr plays a pivotal role in providing all key components to develop complete IoT solutions, and Avnet has the time-tested experience and expertise to deliver those solutions with the value demanded by the channel,” said Josef Brunner, relayr CEO and co-founder. “Our cloud-based enterprise middleware platform for industrial IoT enables organizations to connect any device, harmonize heterogeneous data streams, and make them available for dashboards, mobile apps, services, and analytics.”

Avnet will also provide extensive sales enablement and hands-on trainings for partners around relayr’s Cisco gateway product offering, relayr middleware, consumer-grade and industrial sensors.

Channel Impact^®
Through this announcement, Avnet is intending to offer an effective starter kit that can help allied partners to capitalize on the potential of IoT.

AppViewX launches Partner+ Channel Program

AppViewX, a Seattle-based management, automation and orchestration vendor, has announced the launch of Partner+, the company’s new channel partner program.

As part of the program expansion, AppViewX named 25-year industry veteran Keith McManigal as vice president of channel sales. Prior to joining AppViewX, McManigal was the vice president of channel sales, Americas, at F5 Networks, and before that served as a Director of Business Development at Cisco.

“As the business expectation of the modern data center continues to evolve, companies need trusted advisors to guide them through the process,” said Keith McManigal, vice president of channel sales. “I’m proud to be joining the AppViewX team as we launch our expanded channel partner program to turn IT from a business impediment to an innovation driver for customers.”

Channel partners can join the AppViewX partnership ecosystem at either the gold, silver or bronze levels. Gold and silver partners will have access to a dedicated inside channel team for demand generation, deal qualification, product training and technical support.

The AppViewX Platform enables companies to deliver L2-L7 network and application services in traditional and greenfield data centers.

Channel Impact^®
The program is intended to build partner opportunity and profitability through annual licensing annuities.