Sean Charnock CEO, Faction

Faction, Inc., a multi-cloud MSP, announced appointments in the executive team to deliver the next phase of company expansion. The additions to the executive team bring decades of business leadership experience in high tech and managed service industries.

These changes come at a critical time as Faction readies to scale further into global locations, deepen key alliances, and deliver portfolio expansion for multi-cloud.

These additions follow closely behind a recent $14 million financing round.

Two of firms’s leaders are transitioning into new positions. Sean Charnock is taking over the CEO role. Luke Norris, Faction’s founder and original CEO, is moving to executive chairman and CSO. They are joined by Pete Bell, SVP sales, and Duan van der Westhuizen, VP marketing. With this leadership team, the company is poised for growth in 2019 and beyond.

Sean Charnock takes on the CEO position following his time as president, which he took on late in 2018, when he moved from board into an operating role.

“Sean and I have a great history together and this is a long-formed aspiration of ours. Joining as a board member and investor in early 2018, Sean’s impact was immediate. Our shared vision for the opportunities in front of us makes this partnership between the two of us extremely exciting,” says Norris.

Charnock has a leadership experience in the high-tech industries spanning infrastructure as a service (IaaS), cyber security, and telecommunications. His career includes prior executive leadership positions at ISIGHT (FireEye), The Planet, and Efficient Networks (Siemens). As one of the founders of Softlayer, he helped grow the company to one of the biggest privately-held cloud infrastructure providers in the world. Softlayer was acquired by IBM in 2013 to underpin a new IBM Cloud Services Division, recently renamed to IBM Cloud.

“I am extremely excited to be leading the Faction team,” he said. “The company is outpacing our competition with rapid product innovation. The advances with our key partners will continue to increase this divide over the next 12 to 24 months. Multi-cloud continues to be the dominant model for enterprise IT. I look forward to working alongside Luke and the entire Faction staff to capitalize on the amazing opportunity in front of us.”

Luke Norris, executive chairman and CSO has been the driving force behind Faction’s expansion from a hosted private cloud provider to a leader in multi-cloud services. With Charnock on board, Norris’ focus transitioned away from daily operations. He continuously drives company’s vision and innovation, emphasizing key partnerships and technology portfolio.

Pete Bell joins as SVP sales. He will lead all aspects of sales, including revenue growth strategy and sales operations. He has more than 25 years of global sales leadership experience in North America, Europe, and Asia. He has built, recruited, managed, and grown sales operations in cloud, co-location, and network solutions.

Duan van der Westhuizen joins as VP marketing. He will have ownership of all areas of marketing, including go-to-market strategy, brand, demand generation, and product marketing. He brings more than 15 years of cloud and managed services experience in the UK and US. Prior to joining Faction, he was the GM for Microsoft Azure managed services at Rackspace.

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April 4, 2019 | Press Release