The future of troubled IP telephony vendor Zultys remains in doubt after the firm lost three EMEA employees to rival vendor ShoreTel.
Zultys’s head of EMEA business development, Justine Cross, has joined ShoreTel in the same role. She is joined by two Zultys colleagues, Jackie Iddon (formerly UK country manager at Zultys), who has been appointed area sales manager, and Tom Hassan (a field engineer at Zultys), who becomes sales engineer.
Earlier in the month, Zultys claimed that it was ‘business at usual’ for its UK partners, despite channel concerns over its financial stability (CRN, 7 August).
Cross told CRN: “Zultys has had its financial issues. As an employee you need to feel some security and this feeling of security was diminishing at Zultys. I want to work at an established company and not feel uncertain. However, I’m still proud of what we achieved at Zultys.”
Cross claimed that the Zultys team had been approached by a number of companies, but it did not want to leave Zultys to join an inferior outfit.
“ShoreTel fits my background because it operates in a similar market to Zultys, has smart technology and is channel focused,” she said.
Ken Bailey, head of EMEA marketing at ShoreTel, said the vendor is delighted to have appointed a team with such an impressive track record.
“We can provide our employees with financial stability, and these appointments are a great opportunity to boost our growth,” he said. “We have been embarking on some channel recruitment and Justine and the team can accelerate that process.”
Ian Milnes, president of Zultys, told CRN: “It is a blow for us, but not a big blow. Justine, Jackie and Tom are great people and I’m sorry to see them go. Their job was to set up channels. Those channels are still in place and have been making money.”
Alex Waterman, managing director of Zultys distributor Datafonix, said: “Zultys now has no UK support and we have made the decision to drop out of any relationship with the vendor.”
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