Silver Peak Hires Former Ruckus President To Lead Global Field Operations

Ian Whiting, Ruckus Networks' former president, has landed at Silver Peak as the SD-WAN provider's new president of global field operations.

SD-WAN industry player Silver Peak has brought on Ian Whiting, former president of Ruckus Networks, as its president of global field operations leading indirect sales through partners and sales through its service provider customers, the company said Tuesday.

In his new role, Whiting will broaden partner engagement, which the company hopes will spur new customer growth with SD-WAN.

"Where I've really made my career is with companies where we've taken a partner-first mentality, and that's what I want to bring to Silver Peak," Whiting told CRN.

[Related: Silver Peak Targets 'Very Large' Partner Recruitment Campaign For 2019]

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Silver Peak is a front-runner in the SD-WAN space—the company was once again listed as a leader in research firm Gartner's second-annual WAN Edge Infrastructure report published in December. Now, Silver Peak is focusing on expanding its operations globally, Whiting said.

"A very big part of that is how do we really engage in all forms of partnerships, [including] traditional VAR, system integrators and resellers," he said. "With SD-WAN, the opportunities for the channel are quite literally endless because we're just starting on this journey. There's a big technical managed services component to SD-WAN for partners."

Whiting is reporting directly to Silver Peak founder and CEO David Hughes, the company said.

“[Whiting] brings a unique combination of proven go-to-market expertise and success and a no-nonsense leadership style that we need to scale our go-to-market motions with partners and end customers to fully capitalize on the opportunity in front of us to lead the SD-WAN market," Hughes said in a statement.

Whiting will put his experience to work helping Silver Peak on board, train and sell more with partners. "I think by doing those things well, we'll create value opportunities for our partners who are in the business of making money. If we can give them great technology and support them well, that's the formula for success," he said.

Whiting is no stranger to the networking market. He has been president of Ruckus Networks since July 2018 after the company was acquired by Arris International in 2017. Arris was later bought by Commscope in April 2019. Whiting also served as chief commercial officer for Ruckus for nearly three years prior to his role as president. Before his time with Ruckus, Whiting served as president of global field operations for storage software firm Egnyte and held positions with networking firms Brocade and Riverbed.