Avanade, a 12-year-old joint venture formed by Microsoft and Accenture, has named Florin Rotar as the company’s first chief technology innovation officer and Stella Goulet as its first chief marketing officer. Rotar has worked at Avanade since it was founded, and in the new role will be responsible for communicating the technology consulting firm’s vision to enterprise customers. He will also assist in the company’s innovation and incubation functions. Goulet joins Avanade from Capgemini where she led global marketing efforts.
“Our enterprise customers have complex challenges that require business technology solutions to drive new levels of results,” said Ian Jordan, executive vice president of sales, marketing, innovation and alliances at Avanade. “Florin and Stella bring deep expertise in understanding customer needs, and how to deliver market-relevant innovation that customers need. Together, they will help us advance Avanade’s unique position in the market as a services innovator in Microsoft technologies.”
Former Microsoft executive Otto Berkes has been named the executive vice president of technology and chief technology officer at HBO, with plans to replacing longtime HBO vet Bob Zitter next March. Berkes joined HBO last year, responsible for the company’s HBO GO and MAX Go services. Berkes worked at Microsoft for 18 years, and is one of the four original creators of the Xbox. GeekWire previously reported on a new engineering and development office that HBO recently established in Seattle, led by former Microsoft vets.
Seattle interactive design firm Produxs has named Tom Armstrong to the position of national director of business development. Armstrong previous worked at the Ramp Group, BDO Seidman LLP and Grant Thornton LLP, and most recently served as director of business development at FGI.
“This is an exciting step in the growth and evolution of Produxs,” said CEO Ken Hunt. “We’ve experienced strong annual growth organically through referrals and word of mouth, and we believe Tom will amplify those results dramatically in 2013.” Produxs’ clients include Amazon, Expedia and Microsoft.
Former PayPal and Slide executive Max Levchin is reportedly set to join the board of Yahoo as part of a shakeup being led by CEO Marissa Mayer. The New York Times has more details, reporting that Brad Smith, the chief executive of Intuit, and David W. Kenny, chief executive of the Weather Channel, are prepping to depart. Google bought Slide for $180 million, and then shut the service down last year.
Seattle mobile analytics startup Medio Systems Inc. has named Ken Lawrence as vice president of sales. “Ken has a proven record of success and sales innovation across a broad range of companies,” said Rob Lilleness, president and CEO of Medio Systems. “His insight and sales acumen for Big Data and cloud solutions, analytic technologies as well as his ability cultivate and lead a powerful team, will help fuel Medio’s continued growth around the globe.” Lawrence most recently served as vice president of sales at Memento Security, a provider of analytic software for enterprise fraud detection.
Viableware has named Timothy Wissner as chief financial officer. He’s the former CFO at Windermere Real Estate and Windermere Solutions. Viableware is developing a hardware-based dining payment platform, one which we wrote about earlier this year.
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