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Officials from the company that developed the industry’s first open source telephony platform – a technology that’s garnered about 2 million users – said today that they’ve brought on a new marketing executive they expect to bolster its reseller business.

 

Digium Chief Executive Officer Danny Windham said he’s looking for Leslie Conway to get his company’s Asterisk (News - Alert)-based VoIP products into the hands of a new type of reseller.

 

Rather than the traditional “do-it-yourselfer,” Windham said, who primarily used Asterisk and Digium (News - Alert) interface cards and built specially tailored solutions, the new reseller is looking for turn-key products to sell – a market that the Huntsville, Alabama-based company has delved into quickly since acquiring IP PBX (News - Alert) maker Switchvox last year.

 

“Leslie is the ideal candidate to come to this role, because she already has a great deal of experience that qualifies her for this job,” Windham told TMCnet during an interview. “For example, she has been responsible for developing programs and helping with recruitment and enabling resellers in small- and medium-sized businesses today, and she has corporate marketing experience, specifically in selling and distribution. The way to really today sell is through marketing programs, so her experience is ideal and we all think very highly of her competency.”

 

Conway comes to Digium from the same company that once employed Windham – Adtran, a networking vendor that’s also based in Huntsville and that Windham described as a strong business partner.

 

Conway worked as Adtran’s vice president of global marketing for about seven years, and was hailed there for rolling out a new international channel program in last year – experience that Windham says she’s going to use in her new role – as well as kick-starting a telesales effort to bolster support for SMB resellers.

 

Windham said Conway’s departure from Adtran represents a career-oriented decision to build a channel from scratch.

 

“I will admit there’s a level of awkwardness, but we have a strict no-recruitment policy at Adtran,” Windham said. “They are a business partner, and we value what we believe to be a good relationship. It (Huntsville) is a small town, and we’ve worked with Leslie in the past.”

 

Rick Schansman, senior vice president and general manager of Adtran's enterprise networks division, said his company realizes that Conway has a unique opportunity at Digium and wishes her success.

"We look forward to our continued relationship with Digium and Leslie in the days ahead," Schansman said.

 

According to Windham, Conway, as vice president of marketing, will develop both the traditional promotional side of marketing as well as the new “Digium/Switchvox (News - Alert)” channel. Specifically, Conway will identify and recruit resellers, including internationally.

 

Windham said that the legacy strategy of selling boards and open source products has gotten international traction.

 

“It’s very early on in our building out traditional channels internationally, but the steps are that we’ve got product localization that we’re building today that can be sold in a number of geographies,” Windham said. “We’re expanding beyond America to primarily English-speaking speaking countries.”