Wanted SVP of Sales
John Delozier, SVP of Sales at ArrowS3, has left the building.
I last saw John in January at the ArrowS3 National Sales Conference, and he was quite literally carrying the ArrowS3 UC torch. John’s been hawking Avaya gear and services for most of his career. Prior to ArrowS3, he was a principal at Cross Telecom which Arrow Electronics acquired in 2011. Cross did revenue of $120 million in 2010 – that’s nothing to sneeze at unless you are Arrow which did $21.36 billion last year.
John’s not saying what’s next – probably because he doesn’t know yet. Another Avaya dealer is logical, but seems unlikely. When John talks about his Avaya contacts, it is generally in the past tense because many have moved-on (to firms such as HP, Genband, and Cisco). The only clue he offered was it would likely be a privately held company.
John’s timing struck me as odd as it’s still early in the year. Most sales execs only consider moves after year-end. My guess is either his MBOs were not significant or he deemed them un-obtainable. Avaya just reported Q2-14 performance and its US revenue was down $28 million from the same quarter last year, and down $72 million from Q1-14.
John did recently attend IAUG.
Perhaps John’s timing is related to it being the one year anniversary of a life-threatening situation. Feeding tubes and 9 year old kids have a way of changing one’s priorities.
My guess: John ends up at Virsae – it’s a New Zealand based firm that developed the original Avaya Contact Center Express (CCE). The company has built a multi-channel gateway for contact centers that interconnects with multiple platforms via SIP. ArrowS3 is using Versae technology to create its own branded service called OneAgent. The offer brings Lync to Avaya contact center agents.
This prediction is based on the way John spoke about Virsae, a bit more wistfully than other vendors. It would also leverage his call center expertise, his Avaya channel relations including those at ArrowS3, and of course Versae is still small (and private).
I did not get the impression John’s in much of a rush. Knowledgeable sources believe he made his decision to leave ArrowS3 months ago.
All sales staff are reporting to ArrowS3 CEO Mike Bevilacqua (also from Cross) until a replacement is named.