Oracle Shakes Up Channel Execs

Oracle's got a new channel chief, completing a stealthy shake up in the company's executive channel ranks that began a little over two months ago.

The company confirmed that Judson Althoff will now take the reins of the Oracle's channel organization, as senior vice president of worldwide alliances and channels.  Althoff most recently served as vice president of global platform and distribution sales and as the head of Oracle's Technology Channel Program Office. In that role he headed up the company's Remarketer program.

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Oracle confirmed that Doug Kennedy, Althoff's predecessor in the channel chief role, has left the company. Oracle provided no information about the 16-year Oracle veteran's future plans, but reports say that Kennedy is headed to Microsoft where he will play a top role in the applications group.

For more about Oracle's evolving relationship with the channel, click here.

Oracle's shake-up in the top channel post came just a little over two months after Rauline Ochs, Oracle's North American channel chief left the company in January 2008 to go work as a sales executive for an Oracle customer, an insurance agency. Ochs had been widely credited with making Oracle, considered channel-unfriendly, into a company that is now considered more supportive of the channel.

But whether that new channel friendliness will remain intact now that the company's top two channel executives have made their exits remains to be seen.

When she left Oracle in January, Ochs gave no indication that there was trouble in the company's channel organization. Ochs told Channel Insider that the channel team remaining at Oracle was solid and that the programs she and Kennedy put in place were there to stay.