Micromuse Inc, the San Francisco, California-based network management software company, has finally ended its search for a new chairman and CEO, with the announcement yesterday that Greg Brown, ex-president of Ameritech’s custom business services unit, will take up the position as of March 1. Stephen Allott, who has served as interim CEO since October 1998, will continue on as president and CFO. Speaking during a conference call to analysts early Thursday, Micromuse management said they chose Brown for his strong track record in telecoms (a key focus for Micromuse), cable TV and data networking. One analyst who participated in the call told ComputerWire that Brown would first be charged with boosting the company’s business in North America. Although Micromuse has won several large accounts in the region, it has had its most success to date in the UK, where the company was founded. But Micromuse sees North America as an area of huge potential for its software products and it’s looking for Brown to use his sales and marketing background to boost the company’s presence in those markets. Something which the analyst said he was confident Brown could achieve, given his wealth of operational and sales and marketing experience. At 38, Brown was the youngest business unit president at Ameritech, a post he held since 1996. In this position, he was responsible for all marketing, sales, service and operations associated with providing communications and data networking services to Ameritech’s largest clients. Under Brown’s direction, Ameritech’s custom business services grew significantly, achieving double- digit growth in revenues and earnings for the last two years in a row. Prior to his most recent post, Brown served in a number of key general management and planning positions during his 11 years with the company. These included president of Ameritech’s new media division for just under three years and four years as president of two divisions responsible for providing equipment, operations support and system integration services for business customers. Before joining Ameritech in 1987, he held a variety of sales and marketing positions at AT&T and prior to that he worked for IBM in various sales and sales support capacities. Brown’s compensation agreement, which involves a large share option component plus performance incentives, coupled with the fee Micromuse will have to pay the headhunter firm, Heidrick & Struggles, for finding him, looks likely to cause the company to report a one-time charge (less than $1m) in the March quarter, Micromuse said.
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