Another channel chief gone from Avaya

ANZ channel director Todd Parsons has parted ways with Avaya after 18 months in the job.

Parsons joined Avaya in June 2014, replacing outgoing channel director David Elliott, who is now at Aruba Networks. Elliott joined Avaya in 2011.

Prior to joining Avaya, Parsons was channel sales and alliances director for NetApp ANZ. He joined NetApp in 2010 as channel sales and marketing director and was responsible for the local company's evolution from a direct to indirect model, according to an Avaya statement about Parsons' appointment.

Parsons told CRN he was let go from Avaya after a series of redundancies at the communications vendor's local business.

Avaya managing director Jeff Sheard told CRN a new channel director would be appointed in the new year and that he also wanted to "take this opportunity to leverage my past experience in sales and channel management to gain a deeper understanding of the entire Avaya business here in Australia and New Zealand".

Sheard added that network solution director Martin Claridge had been promoted to CTO. "Managing our team of technical experts, Martin will play a leadership role in keeping our customers across our solutions roadmap and explaining how our recent acquisitions and R&D delivers business innovation, competitive advantage and cost savings.”

Parsons' redundancy follows a string of executive departures at Avaya over the past two years.

In July, Sheard replaced Avaya managing director Tony Simonsen, who parted ways with the company after just over a year in the job. Simonsen has since taken a new role as Polycom’s managing director.

In March, Avaya also replaced Asia-Pacific president Michael Muller with former Cisco vice president of business markets Mike Ansley.