The Windstream Advisory Council was notified that the next Channel Chief is Curt Allen. Curt was a co-founder of X4 that Sandler acquired last July. Curt retired in September. That was short-lived. He now gets to tackle Windstream.
After 2 acquisitions (Broadview and Earthlink), Windstream is still trying to find a profitable line of business. ILEC consumer and small business service; Wholesale; Enterprise; and CLEC consumer and small business service sectors make up almost $6 Billion in annual revenues. I don’t know what sector Allworx fits in.
The UCaaS strategy has 6 varying platforms: Broadsoft, Metaswitch, Allworx, Avaya, Mitel, and Broadview’s OfficeSuiteUC.
There have been at least two layoffs in the last few months.
On the channel side, musical chairs coupled with integration and implementation woes, makes for a hard sell to partners.
Good luck to Curt who takes over a channel that is tired of dealing with this ship that looks headed for the rocky waters of telecom financial distress.
The saving grace is that MOST companies suck at deployment right now. They don’t even want to give a FOC date since they know they mostly likely won’t hit it.
He just has to chant the company slogan: SD-WAN! UCaaS! SD-WAN! UCaaS! And bring the Mea culpas.
At least, he understands the channel, which is a huge change of direction in channel heads. Most came out of direct or VADs – and have zero experience with partners. You know, partners, the folks actually selling to the customers.
Congrats and good luck, Curt!
As of today, the market cap is just $350M!!
People are asking what happened to Olen Scott, who came over from EarthLink and was named channel head in February? And WIND just made an announcement about Michael Brennan as the head of national and strategic programs. How does that fit in the org chart? Jason Dishon was WIND’s CC in 2016; he is now over at Nitel.