TSI International Software Ltd is spreading its wings even further over the telecommunications and financial services industries, announcing yesterday the formation of its first dedicated sales and marketing teams to specifically attack those markets. The enterprise application integration vendor said John Keenan, formerly Novera Software’s senior vice president of sales and marketing (acquired by TSI in October), will oversee the company’s overall vertical sales efforts.
TSI said Keenan brings considerable experience to the job, having held senior management at Oracle Corp (prior to Novera), where he managed both major and vertical account teams. Under Keenan, Rich Jenoriki, formerly of BEA Systems Inc, will lead the financial services vertical sales and marketing team while another former BEA director, Steve Feldman, will head sales and marketing for the telecommunications market segment.
Dave Power, ex-CEO of Novera and now head of marketing at TSI, said the two teams were the first TSI has ever set up to address vertical markets. While the company has sold into both the financial and telecommunications sectors before, he said the strategy was very much one size fits all. Now, under the new structure, TSI will work to specifically position its software around those vertical industries.
Power didn’t rule out the possibility of moving into other verticals but added that there were no plans to do so at the moment. He said TSI was well positioned to hit the ground running with its new strategy given that both the company’s recent acquisitions – of Novera and Braid – already broke their businesses down to focus on those core verticals. Novera had financial, telecommunications and retail units, while Braid focused primarily on the finance market.
As part of its strategy, TSI said it will leverage its base of more than 300 financial services firms and many telecommunications companies – including Alcatel, AT&T, Bell Canada, Bell Atlantic/NYNEX, Deutsche Telekom, GTE, Lucent, MCI Worldcom, Pacific Bell, Southwest Bell and Z-Tel – to further expand its push into vertical markets.
