After less than four months as Novell’s channel chief, Javier Colado (pictured) has been promoted into a new position, and Novell’s partner program now reports to Chief Marketing Officer John Dragoon.
According to a Novell press release: Colado becomes president of Novell EMEA. His partner responsibilities, including the execution and leadership of Novell’s partner programs, will transition to Novell’s marketing organization and report to Dragoon, who remains CMO.
Ironically, I interviewed Dragoon yesterday for a podcast. At the time Dragoon wasn’t able to disclose Colado’s new position, but Dragoon did drop a few hints during the podcast that Colado’s partner team had a close working relationship with Dragoon’s office.
The Right Stuff?
Still, Colado’s short stint as channel chief raises some questions.
- Was Colado the right pick as channel chief back in September?
- Did Novell’s channel program move forward under his direction? Apparently yes, according to this insight from CRN. (UPDATE: Apparently, CRN took its story down because it lacked the fact that Colado had been promoted. Sorry about the dead CRN link, folks)
- Will Novell hire a new channel chief to report into Dragoon? It doesn’t sound like it.
But we’ve got an email into Novell requesting comment. (Update, Jan. 7, 2009: Novell says Dragoon is channel chief plus Novell hires Microsoft veteran.)
And I’m not ready to throw Dragoon under a bus for not telling me about Colado’s new position during yesterday’s podcast recording. Dragoon’s quandary: Do you mention a forthcoming executive change involving the EMEA president slot? Or do you remain mum and role out the news, as planned, a day later? I understand Dragoon’s decision to remain mum for a day.
Still, I continue to criticize Novell’s failure to connect the dots between the company’s disparate products (SUSE Linux, Identity Management, Security, etc.). But year-over-year SUSE Linux sales continue to rise more than 30 percent — which is a key trend I didn’t expect.
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disparate, pisparate
Who cares? Can I make any money selling it? After all, I am a VAR, and I have been one since 1991 with a company that has been in business since 1980. Look at Symantec, for instance. They have a disparate product line and it has been berry berry good for them. Why? They pay their salespeople and have a good product and have a good company. BUT MOST IMPORTANT: THEY PAY THEIR SALESPEOPLE WELL. Oh, by the way this isn’t new IBM pay their salespeople well and they are still in business and doing fine. Oh and buy the way Microsoft pays their salepeople well and so does Cisco. Novell used to pay their salespeople well, but they don’t anymore.
Salespeople (definition): anyone actively involved in engaging with the customer directly on making them aware of a product and service that would be beneficial to them. A salesperson could be a on-staff salesperson or a VAR.
Is this OpenSourceInfoGuy or VARGuy?
When they turn off all the lights at Novell and VarGuy.com cuts its staff as well, you can count on VARGuy weathering the storm in this difficult economy. He is recession and depression-proof and if anyone is the last one to turn off the lights, it will be he, and when that happens we can all go home…
HurdyGurdy: All (well, mostly all…) comments are welcome on this site. But The VAR Guy has two points of clarification.
1. TheVARguy.com isn’t cutting staff: He’s hiring.
2. TheVARguy.com isn’t turning off the lights. He’s cranking up the wattage.
The folks at CRN have some more background on Novell’s channel chief history. Here’s their spin.
Update: The CRN spin wasn’t quite right. As TheVARguy.com originally suspected (story far above), Novell has no plans to hire a new channel chief. Dragoon remains CMO and IS the channel chief. But wait: There’s another new name in Novell’s channel organization. Here’s the scoop.
VARGuy, instead of cranking up the wattage change out your lightbulbs with florescent bulbs and lower your office temperature by a couple of degrees in the winter and start buying green PCs and printers. That way you won’t have to crank up the wattage as you grow.