This is a confidential search. Please contact us for more robust position specification.

Our client is a global leader in business communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact center, data solutions and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world.

This executive will own the P&L and will lead a globally dispersed team of 20 product management professionals to drive Unified Communications vision, revenue growth, margin enhancement, product roadmap, technology transition, and product management excellence across the entire Unified Communications Applications portfolio. This group includes all messaging, conferencing and soft client applications. He/She will lead the teams that drive market analysis (research, technology assessment, competitive/quantitative analysis, market sizing, product performance, operational metrics, win/loss analysis), product vision and strategy (business case, value proposition, customer/channel, pricing, buy, build or partner tradeoff analysis, market requirement documents, product innovation), product planning and execution (sales process, market requirements, product roadmap, lifecycle and migrations, user resources, product implementation, support plans, integrations and release milestones) and program strategy (customer acquisition, launch references/endorsements, customer retention, customer lifecycle and product naming) for this business that provides significant leverage across the entire enterprise.

He/She will drive product transition strategy and tactics, providing migration plans and tools for major customers to move to next generation of products and capabilities. This executive will bring a strong market based customer use focus, embracing social media across all product offerings. This VP will work with the global sales team to drive new product introductions, championing the products to initial customers and other major accounts. This executive will drive strategic alignment throughout the Unified Communications product portfolio, prioritizing product content and aligning Unified Communications products with the entire offering. He/She will drive the product management processes, partnering with engineering and product marketing to prioritize opportunities/activities that have the most significant impact and set the tone and culture for success.

This executive will staff to win, hiring, developing, mentoring, and training the next generation of product management and P&L executives at the company. He/She will have significant executive team and CEO visibility and will have ample opportunity based on success for broader responsibilities and upward mobility. This position reports to the VP/GM of  Unified Communications Applications.

The qualified candidate will have the following:

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EnerG2 makes the carbon that makes energy storage better. Advanced materials are the key driver behind energy storage system improvements. Whether it’s holding electrostatic charge in ultracapacitors or improving the cycle life of battery chemistries, it is the materials that will drive innovation. Competitive carbons used in energy storage systems today are typically derived from agricultural waste materials. These traditional carbon products are highly impure, inconsistent, and not optimized for energy storage end-use. EnerG2’s engineered carbons deliver unparalleled electrochemical performance and value not possible with competing materials. EnerG2 manufactures carbon materials for multiple applications within the rapidly growing markets for lead-acid batteries, ultracapacitors, lithium ion batteries, and next generation lithium chemistries. EnerG2’s business model creates value across a broad spectrum of applications in a rapidly growing and highly valuable new industry.

Through its Carbon Technology Platform, EnerG2 has developed the only technology that can exploit virtually all electrochemical energy storage market opportunities. The Company has deployed proprietary large-scale carbon processing technologies to control the structure and purity of carbons at the molecular level. These techniques result in optimized material performance, reduced costs, and rapid adaptability to application requirements. This technology dramatically improves the performance of each device type into which it is integrated and enables step-change improvement of storage technologies..

The qualified candidate will have the following:

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Enphase Energy is the market leader in the microinverter category and has grown rapidly since its first commercial shipment in mid-2008, with over 1,000,000 units shipped to date, representing more than 30,000 solar installations. Revenue growth is exceptional: $1.7 million in 2008, $20.2 million in 2009 and $61.6 million in 2010. Enphase delivers microinverter technology for the solar industry that increases energy production, simplifies design and installation, improves system uptime and reliability, reduces fire safety risk and provides a platform for intelligent energy management. To date, the solar industry has relied on the traditional central inverter approach that has largely remained unchanged for the past two decades. Enphase has built from the ground up a semiconductor-based microinverter system that converts direct current (DC) electricity to alternating current (AC) electricity at the individual solar module level, and brings a system-based, high technology approach to solar energy generation leveraging its design expertise across power electronics, semiconductors, networking and embedded and web-based software technologies.

The company’s microinverter systems has been installed in all 50 U.S. states and eight Canadian provinces. It sells its microinverter systems primarily to distributors who resell them to solar installers. Over 2700 installers in North America have installed Enphase’s microinverters through June 30, 2011. Enphase also sells directly to large installers, equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”) and strategic partners. A substantial majority of its revenue has been generated by sales within the United States. Sales to customers in Canada commenced in 2009. In early 2011, Enphase established sales offices in France and Italy.

By integrating the Enphase microinverter technology with Envoy, the company’s proprietary communications gateway, and its Enlighten web-based software, the company offers significant design and operating benefits beyond the core power conversion functionality. Enphase has also established industry leading reliability. Based on data from a sample of 2009 and 2010 North American residential and small commercial installations, Westinghouse Solar indicates that Enphase’s microinverters have a failure rate of 0.207% compared to a significantly higher failure rate of 9.43% for traditional central inverters. (more…)

We are retained on a Chief Financial Officer search for Alta Devices, our fifth search for Alta.

Alta Devices is driving a new dawn in solar energy by developing solar cells up to 30% efficient at a module cost below 50¢/watt. Alta will be successful without government subsidies because their lightweight, flexible, high energy density solution is unique and extraordinarily compelling across a wide array of applications. Alta has developed a foundational thin-film technology that delivers the world’s highest efficiency/lowest cost solar modules. Alta’s solar cells are based on high efficiency compound semiconductor materials and proprietary manufacturing equipment to grow thin film solar cells. The technology is compatible with both rigid modules and roll-to-roll processing.

The firm’s technology is based on Gallium Arsenide (GaAs), a single-crystal, direct bandgap compound semiconductor with high conversion efficiency, good performance in low light and across temperature ranges. Founded by renowned solar experts Harry Atwater of Cal Tech and Eli Yablonovitch of UCB, and headed by CEO Chris Norris, Alta has filed 71 patents and has assembled a world-class solar technology and operations team. Alta has produced an NREL-confirmed GaAs cell with world record efficiency of 28.4%.

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