Pitt patters into Data Integration hot seat

Richard Pitt takes reins from recently departed Garath Lauder

VAR Data Integration (DI) has selected a new big cheese in the form of experienced comms industry veteran Richard Pitt.

DI was without a managing director following Garath Lauder's decision to quit the security and networking specialist three years after its £9m acquisition by Exchanging.

Pitt, who has worked for several big-name vendors including Xylan and Avaya, took the reins on 1 August.

Talking to CRN, Pitt (pictured) said his priority is to target Exchanging's customer base with DI's proposition, as well as taking more of its parent company's technology into DI's existing clients.

"It is a very exciting time for DI," he said. "There is a great willingness at the board level to forge more cooperation across the business."

Most recently, Pitt was group sales director at Avaya partner IP Integration, before that serving a six-year stint as unified comms vendor Arc's European sales director. Further back, Pitt was a sales director at Avaya and held the UK managing director role at Xylan, a switching vendor which was acquired by Alcatel in 1999.

A representative for Exchanging said: "Richard is a very experienced executive with a long history of more than 20 years in the UK and European IT and comms market. He brings with him extensive knowledge in leading DI businesses like ours so was a natural fit."

DI, which works with vendors including Palo Alto, Juniper, Aruba and Extreme Networks, logged a turnover of £12m in its most recently filed accounts.