Unify, the communications software and services firm, which used to be known as Siemens Enterprise Communications (News - Alert), has named Jon Pritchard executive vice president of worldwide channels.

Under his new job, Pritchard will manage indirect channels. These include small- and medium–size markets, and larger alliances. He has the experience and background to make it work, the company said.

"Growing revenue through complementary indirect channels is one of Unify's highest priorities and we need to further increase our focus on being channel-ready and providing value to our partners," Dean Douglas, the new CEO of Unify, said in a statement. "Jon brings global channel expertise to Unify to help lead this charge and take advantage of opportunities in the market."

Pritchard was president of Comstor (News - Alert) Worldwide, a $2.5 billion channel IT business which operates in 40 nations. At Comstor, he led worldwide operations of Westcon's Cisco dedicated business practice, such as operations and strategic sales programs, marketing and business development, business segmentation planning and organizational development. Overall, he has over 25 years of channel experience, and Pritchard also worked at Ingram Micro (News - Alert) UK.

"Unify has a tremendous opportunity to grow its channel business and deliver real value to channel partners and customers," Pritchard said in a statement. "With a dynamic new brand, the industry-leading OpenScape portfolio plus the exciting new Project Ansible that will hit the market later this year, the time is now for Unify to take full advantage of the capabilities of a world-class channel program. I am excited at the opportunity to join Unify and bring its indirect channel program to the next level."

Unify is a joint venture of The Gores Group and Siemens AG (News - Alert), and it recently named some other top executives. It named Steve Shanck general manager of North America, which makes him responsible for sales and customer opportunities. Earlier, he worked at Harris Corporation, EADS, Inc., General Dynamics Information Technology, and Motorola. He also was the principal of Trilogy Venture Group.

Douglas was named CEO at Unify, after being president and CEO of Westcon Group (News - Alert), CEO of LCC International, and he worked at IBM and Motorola. He became CEO at Unify on Jan. 16, 2014. Douglas has been involved in many experiences which led to organic growth and acquisitions at the firms while he was there, the company said.