Despite this week being in the run-up to the holidays, it was fairly eventful in terms of seeing a lot of hiring and promotion action in the telecom, technology and enterprise software spaces. Some of the most notable executive personnel changes are highlighted below.
For many, December means a few extra days off toward the end of the month, but it seems that, for the enterprise, it’s also prime time for executive-level hiring and promoting. Take, for example, Polycom (News 
- Alert), which appointed Peter A. Leav as its new president and CEO earlier in the month or, most recently, Alcatel-Lucent’s appointment of Tim Krause as chief marketing officer.
eXelate, a New York City-based advertising data platform provider, announced on Tuesday that it has named Deb Josephs, formerly of Everyday Health, Inc., the company’s new SVP of Global Human Resources and Matt Bennathan, formerly of Callcredit Information Group, as VP and Managing Director, UK. Josephs will be responsible for all employee initiatives across eXelate's worldwide offices, while Bennathan will be tasked with contributing to the growth of company’s UK business and operations across publishers, agencies, platforms and advertisers.
Gregory Lee was recently named the new president and CEO of Samsung (News - Alert) Electronics for the important North American market. The company said in a statement that Lee will be responsible in part for “strengthening its leading positions in the smartphone and wireless markets in the U.S.”
The world of both residential and business telephone systems could see a major change with Timothy McDonald as MagicJack's new COO. MagicJack sells an adapter that converts traditional landline telephones into internet-friendly Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phones by translating the analog phone signals into digital ones. McDonald took the mantle on December 17, and is in charge of the company's marketing, channel management, new products and corporate development.
VoIP business phone developer and manufacturer snom has named Brian Kelley (News - Alert) its new CEO. Kelley, who previously managed the company's business in the Americas, will be in charge of expanding its market presence and growth among Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific. He will work out of snom's Woburn, MA office and will join chief operating officer Michael Knieling (News - Alert) and chief technology officer Usman Tahir in enhancing snom's reputation as a standards-based IP phones and communication devices provider.
To get an idea where Hoyos Labs – a digital infrastructure security company— is heading, just look at the recent hiring of two top scientists. The company has named Scott Streit as chief computer scientist and Boris Kravtsov as chief computer vision scientist. The company says the two will work on development of its identity assertion platform. That comes as Hoyos Labs works on such fields as security, computer vision, biometrics and big data.
Finally, CallFire, a provider of cloud-based call center solutions, has witnessed strong growth over the past couple of years. The company recently crossed 200,000 customers, 200 million campaigns and has enabled over 1.5 billion calls since the company was founded. As part of CallFire’s strategy to further identify opportunities in new markets, the company announced the appointment of Ron Burr as its new CEO.
That’s all for this week in technology Comings and Goings. Happy Holidays!
