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Pivot3 appoints new CxO as revenues rocket

Dollars better flow or Chief Revenue Officer will have to go

Pivot3 grew like crazy in its third quarter as the hyper-converged infrastructure boom carried on... booming.

It grew revenue 105 per cent year-on-year, we're told, with 67 per cent from new customers, apparently. Jamie Lerner has been appointed Chief Revenue Officer, meaning, we suppose, he's responsible for all activities that generate revenue*. He was President for Cloud Systems and Solutions at Seagate until August last year, and a Cisco exec before that.

Somewhat oddly, maybe, Pivot3 still has a COO, VP Ahmad Chamseddine, who is responsible for... what exactly? Operations that don't generate revenue? Normally a COO looks after the daily operations of a company but, in this case, he won't have the revenue-generating ones under his belt, which doesn't give him that much to do, unless he reports to Lerner. Which would be odd too; normally all non-CEO CxOs, such as the CFO and COO and CTO, report to the CEO.

But then Pivot3 has a Chief Marketing Officer, VP Bruce Milne. Does he report to Lerner or is marketing not in Lerner's purview? Possibly Lerner's CRO title is just a sop and he's really a worldwide sales boss with a fancier-than-normal title.

How long Pivot3's growth can continue at this rate is open to conjecture. It has a somewhat low ranking in a recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for integrated systems.

Ahead of it in that MQ are, to mention the most prominent, Cisco, Dell-EMC, HPE, NetApp, Nutanix, Oracle and SimpliVity. There are others. It looks like a field of suppliers in which the rapidly rising tide is lifting all boats. But when the tide stops rising, it is going to be ripe for consolidation. The hyperconverged product supplier group is likely going to get converged itself.

Pivot3 has to push on as fast as it can and build a customer base and revenue stream that can withstand any coming consolidation pressures. Which means Jamie Lerner has a job to do. The dollars better flow or he will find he has to go. ®

* Does that mean the opposite is a CCO, a Chief Cost Officer, responsible for all functions that don't generate revenue? Just asking.

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