Vision Expands Sales and Marketing Efforts with New Team

October 24, 2011 Jenny Thomas

It’s been said that there’s no “i” in “team,” but high availability software and services provider Vision Solutions may take issue with that expression. Vision recently made several new appointments to its sales and marketing team, and Bob Johnson, who was tapped as executive vice president sales and marketing, has his eye on the IBM i platform.

“The System i is our heritage and still represents the majority of our revenue stream,” said Johnson. “You might be surprised to hear me say this, but I am as excited as I’ve ever been about the future of the i.”

And he should know. Johnson has more than 15 years experience with Vision, and has served in numerous management roles with all levels of information availability projects for Fortune 500 companies to small and mid-sized businesses. He played a key role in the integration of Vision Solutions, iTera, Lakeview, and Double-Take, most recently serving as the company’s senior vice president of sales.

Vision has lots of plans for the IBM i portion of its business, and Johnson pointed out two significant product releases to look forward to in the coming months, “Double-Take Share 5.0, which is a database replication product, is out for GA in November, and one of our core i products, MIMIX, will get an update to MIMIX, version 7.1.”

And that’s just for the immediate future. “We’re going to continue to advance our HA offerings–making our solutions more affordable and focusing on the ‘set it, forget it’ type technology.”

Vision’s executive VP of sales and marketing, Bob Johnson.

It is Vision’s long history in the IBM i marketplace that Johnson believes give the company an edge in understanding the needs of the i customer. “IT ops people love us,” he says, “because they can do their upgrades on a Wednesday, instead of over the Thanksgiving holiday or a weekend.” Johnson also attributes Vision’s close relationship with IBM as a reason for the success of their i product line, and why they continue to thrive in the business.

“We feel our products complement when IBM does,” he said. “We fill holes in their solutions.”

In addition, Vision is finding a lot of opportunities for growth with current customers. “We’ve been working with a lot of existing customers on server consolidations and upgrades,” he said.

Overall, Johnson is convinced the i is a very healthy market place. “I tie it back to the health of our revenue stream, and we’re going to see double-digit growth on our side of the i business.”

In his new role, Johnson will lead Vision’s communications and business development strategies for the IBM Power Systems, Windows, Linux, and cloud computing markets. Plans include a campaign to extend Vision’s support across its partner network, as well as broadening its work with service providers, resellers, and software developers that provide solutions to midmarket and enterprise customers. Its initiatives will include a strong focus on partners with skills around Microsoft technologies, such as Hyper-V, Exchange and SharePoint.

In addition to Johnson, Vision added several other new members to its sales and marketing team including: Matt Thatcher, vice president of channels and business development; Allan Campbell, vice president of Asia/Pacific sales; Richard Tee, director of sales, Asia; Mads Toubro, vice president of Europe sales; and Doug Piper, vice president of product strategy.