Windstream has named Eric Solomon as its western region VP of channel sales, reflecting its move to enhance revenue in its partner market channels.
Solomon brings over 15 year of telecom industry experience to Windstream, coming back to the company from competitive cloud provider Masergy, where he served as global account manager working with master agents and top channel partners to help them increase revenue by selling the company’s suite of services.
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Earlier, Solomon worked at Windstream, where he gained a reputation as a top-performing senior sales channel manager for eight years running, earning a promotion to senior sales channel director. In that role, he worked with Windstream "Next Generation Technology Partners" and Windstream channel managers throughout the central region to promote and sell Windstream's suite of strategic products and services such as WANs, Managed Hosting, Managed PBX and High Cap Data.
Additionally, Solomon worked for Covad and Birch in channel management and for ISG Communications in account management. Solomon will report directly to Curt Allen and will be relocating from Chicago to southern California in early 2018.
After purchasing EarthLink and Broadview Communications, Windstream has also continued to invest in its channel sales capabilities. In October, Windstream named Ron Beer as vice president of channel sales for the South division and Michael Brennan as head of national and strategic programs. Adding more sales depth to its channel program reflects Windstream’s desire to ramp up SD-WAN and UCaaS revenues as its legacy wholesale and retail TDM-based services continue to decline every quarter.
However large the SD-WAN opportunity is for Windstream’s channel partners, the service provider told FierceTelecom that it will take time to educate them on how to sell the service due its complexity. Unlike a TDM circuit, to provision an SD-WAN service, the operator not only has to install software and maybe a device at the customer premises, but also must help procure necessary broadband connections.