Windstream has appointed Layne Levine as president of its enterprise business unit, bringing unity to a division that has seen rapid expansion via its acquisitions of EarthLink and Broadview. His appointment follows what Windstream said was an extensive national search.
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Levine left GTT in June when the service provider reorganized its structure into three main units serving enterprise, carrier and EMEA customers. During his tenure at GTT, Levine led the service provider’s revenue growth initiatives worldwide, targeting global carriers and multinational enterprises and developing its emerging channel strategy. Earlier, Levine served as the EVP for GTT’s Americas division, managing the service provider’s sales efforts for North and South America.
Before joining GTT, Levine held the positions of SVP of sales at Alpheus Communications and SVP of retail sales for Deltacom/EarthLink. Additionally, Levine has also held leadership positions at Airband Communications, Level 3 Communications and Broadwing Communications. His experience aligns well with Windstream’s goals for its company’s enterprise unit.
With the acquisition of EarthLink behind them and the Broadview deal set to wrap soon, Windstream will focus its efforts on delivering SD-WAN and unified communications as a service (UCaaS) offerings across its entire small to medium-sized business customer base. As one of the early SD-WAN providers, the EarthLink deal positioned Windstream to bolster its SD-WAN plans.
Analysts have issued bullish outlooks on SD-WAN and UCaaS. IDC forecast that SD-WAN will grow to be a $6 billion market by 2020, while UCaaS is set to grow from a $38 billion to a $43 billion market by 2020.
Windstream continues to make progress with enterprise service revenues, which rose 5% to $516 million in the first quarter of 2017. Now that Windstream has these assets in hand, Levine’s initial focus will be on pursuing new growth opportunities with UCaaS and SD-WAN, as well as its growing array of managed services.