The VAR Guy

It’s safe to say much of Polycom’s success in the UCC space over the past 18 months is due to the stellar executive lineup the company has pulled together. But it has no plans on stopping now, appointing Cisco and Juniper sales maven Tracey Newell to head its global sales.

Newell has been tapped as executive vice president of Global Sales, a new position at Polycom and one in which she will lead Polycom’s global sales and execution, according to the company. It’s a role she’s not altogether unfamiliar with: her previous position was at Juniper Networks, where she was SVP of Worldwide General Business Sales, focusing on the enterprise and midmarket. And before Juniper, Newell led worldwide sales at Cisco Systems.

She will report directly to Polycom President CEO Andrew Miller, and all of the company’s region presidents as well as global sales operations will report to her.

Newell’s appointment is the latest in a string of high-level executive gains Polycom has announced over the past year, starting with Miller’s appointment in May 2010. Since then, Polycom can claim a slew of executive wins, including former Cisco UC exec Joe Burton; former wireless and broadband VP and GM at Motorola Sudhakar Ramakrishna; former UTStarcom VP Ari Bose; and former Citrix exec Kate Hutchison, to name a few.

Those appointments seem to be paying off: In its first quarter of 2011, Polycom’s first-quarter net income increased almost sevenfold to $34 million, compared with just $5 million in net income a year ago. And its second-quarter earnings were equally impressive, with earnings more than doubling from the previous year. Miller noted in the earnings call Polycom continued to capture market share from its chief rival Cisco Systems, and in its first quarter Polycom gained 5 percent points of share in video endpoints and 3 percent points in network infrastructure.

With Cisco’s video business currently in a state of confusion – witnessed lately by the departure of its Videoscape business exec and the company’s decision to merge its service provider and enterprise video businesses – it seems as though Polycom has made the right moves at the right time. We’ll continue, as always, to keep our eye on Polycom and see whether it can keep the pace of its forward momentum.

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