Avaya has appointed Mercer Rowe as senior vice president and general manager of Avaya Cloud, a newly formed organization with a focus on driving cloud products and services, said the company in a statement.

Mr. Rowe’s responsibilities will span public, private and hybrid cloud offers, including cloud R&D, application development and services as well as sales for the newly organized business unit, says Avaya.

Mr. Rowe joins Avaya from IBM, where he served as vice president of strategic partners for the company’s cloud and Watson platforms. Before joining IBM, Mr. Rowe founded and served as CEO of VMware vCloud Service, a joint-venture with SoftBank to deliver cloud services in Japan. He began his career in engineering roles with Lockheed Martin and Nortel Networks.

Mr. Rowe holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University.

[Image courtesy: Avaya]