Current ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — The year brought along its share of high-profile appointments at some of the largest companies in the hosting and IT industry, including Rackspace, Parallels, Terremark, and Savvis.
Google announced in January that company CEO Eric Schmidt will step down from his position and assume the role of chairman while cofounder Larry Page moves up to CEO.
At the time of the announcement, Schmidt said the restructuring in management will produce “even better success” for Google, however, analysts remained skeptical at the time whether Page was ready to leadthe company.
In February, Parallels surprised attendees at its Parallels Partner Summit when founder Serguei Beloussov announced at his keynote address that he would step down as CEO, naming current president Birger Steen as successor.
Steen assumed his CEO duties in April, taking on responsibility for all of Parallel’s functions including engineering and finance.
Meanwhile, Beloussov has stayed on in a full-time capacity as executive chairman.
In the same month, web hosting provider Savvis named Bill Fathers its new president. Reporting to chairman and CEO Jim Ousley, Fathers leads the building of Savvis’ strategic partnerships and growing its global customer base in addition to his previous duties.
Two months later, Savvis announced that it would merge with telecommunications provider CenturyLink.
Also in April, the WHIR’s own editor in chief Liam Eagle was named by parent company iNET Interactive as the co-chair of HostingCon 2011, the premier conference and tradeshow for the hosted services industry.
In this new role, Eagle works with existing chair Kevin Gold to define the educational program for the eventâs more than 60 sessions.
Following its buyout at the beginning of the year by Verizon, cloud hosting provider Terremark Worldwide announced its founder and CEO Manuel D. Medina would resign.
Kerry Bailey, group president of enterprise cloud strategy and services for Verizon, was named as Medina’s successor.
But then just seven months later, Terremark named chief operating officer Nelson Fonseca as Bailey’s replacement, while Bailey was named chief marketing officer for Verizon Enterprise Solutions.
In May, web host Intermedia was acquired by private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners, and in the process, named former Savvis CEO Phil Koen its new chairman and CEO of Intermedia.
In July, Internet infrastructure services provider VeriSign announced that Mark McLaughlin was resigning as CEO, and company founder and chairman Jim Bidzos would return to resume his CEO duties.
At the time, reports suggested that this was not a voluntary decision made by Beckstrom, but instead, one that had been made for him at a secret ICANN board meeting just prior to the announcement.
The organization has since then established a search committee to find a new CEO before Beckstrom’s term ends in July.
Also in August, DNS systems provider Nominum named industry veteran Gary Messiana its new CEO, where he oversees corporate strategy and all operations as the company enhances its products to expand into new markets.
Telecommunications provider Cincinnati Bell had a big year for appointments including some significant changes to its senior management to the company, including its data center and hosting division, CyrusOne, which it had acquired in June of 2010.
The same month, former Cincinnai Bell CFO Gary J. Wojtaszek stepped down from his position and assumed his new role as president of CyrusOne, while Kurt A. Freyberger took over Wojtaszek’s duties as CFO of Cincinnati Bell.
Then just a couple months later, CyrusOne named industry veteran Kevin Timmons as its new chief technology officer, and former CoreLink president and COO Michael Duckett its chief operating officer.
With the announcement of Duckett’s resignation, data center operator CoreLink appointed Jason Weisberger as its new chief technology officer.
IT management technology vendor ScienceLogic named former Tier1 VP and research director Antonio Piraino as chief technology officer.
Meanwhile, ScienceLogic co-founder and former CTO Chris Cordray assumed the chief scientist role at the company.
Earlier this month, cloud and web hosting provider Rackspace Hosting promoted former president of cloud and chief strategy officer Lew Moorman to president.
The promotion arrived just four months after Moorman was elected to Rackspace’s board of directors.
No related posts.
