Tech Sales Execs on the Move — Sun to HP to Bell Micro

It’s job-hopping season again for IT sales executives. Sun Microsystems last week lost its global sales chief. Donald Grantham resigned soon after the company revealed that its server sales were down and the company had plans to restructure its sales force to focus more on emerging markets.

But the day after his resignation from Mountain View, Calif.-based Sun was announced, Grantham resurfaced a few miles west at Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard as that company’s chief sales officer, reporting to Ann Livermore, executive vice president of the Technology Solutions Group at HP, and responsible for HP’s enterprise accounts and public sector sales. HP said it recruited Grantham to lead sales for the communications, media and entertainment, financial services, and manufacturing and distribution industries. He will also lead worldwide alliance sales, sales compensation, global pre-sales, sales support, sales operations and go-to-market effectiveness.

Before his career with Sun, Grantham spent 17 years at IBM. He replaced Andy Mattes, who recently moved into the role of senior vice president and general manager of HP’s Outsourcing Services business.

Meanwhile, a few miles down Interstate 280, distributor Bell Microproducts announced that it had hired away Daniel Vertrees from HP. Vertrees has joined Bell Micro as vice president of enterprise sales and will lead the distributor’s enterprise sales division in the United States and report directly to Jerry Kagele, the company’s president of North American distribution.

Vertrees served as vice president of sales, Americas systems integrators, outsourcers and service providers at HP, prior to this position at Bell Micro. He previously served as vice president of channels for Compaq at the time Compaq was acquired by HP, and he held similar positions at Digital Equipment Corp.