In the moments following implosion at Zultys Technologies (News - Alert) in late July, Justine Cross did more than just soul-searching. After two and a half years of building out the VoIP equipment maker’s channel distribution program in the Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) region, she was suddenly left scrambling.  

Unlike her U.S. counterparts, Cross wasn’t locked out of her U.K. office. (In fact, she had the key.) But upon hearing of the funding problems directly from Zultys founder Ian Milnes, Cross knew her career was in jeopardy and began job-searching. 

One of the first telephone conversations she had was with a reseller partner, who referred her to Sunnyvale, Calif.-based ShoreTel (News - Alert). Cross was very familiar with the Zultys competitor, having just lost out on a project to one of ShoreTel’s channel partners. The company arrived in the U.K. only a year ago but it was able to recruit Geoff Gudgion, a longtime industry veteran with experience at Nortel (News - Alert) and Avaya (News - Alert), to be Managing Director, EMEA, back in March. 

“When Ian sent out the email, he [the reseller] immediately contact Geoff and myself and said we have to talk,” Cross said.

Since August 21, Cross has been the director of business development, EMEA, at ShoreTel – joined by her former colleague Jackie Iddon, area sales manager, and Tom Hassan, sales engineer. And two more former Zultys colleagues are starting next week, Cross told TMCnet.

“When the situation happened with the non-funding, we are all as shocked as the customers. But I haven't got a bad word to say because it elevated my position to allow me to join a company like ShoreTel,” she said during a telephone interview.

And for ShoreTel, the timing couldn’t be better. Led by its U.S. customers wishing to broaden out their IP communications deployments overseas, ShoreTel has been expanding its international presence. But even though it has now established the EMEA office, those existing customers still belong to the U.S. channel partners.

“You are totally starting from scratch,” explained Ken Bailey, who heads up marketing for ShoreTel’s EMEA region.

But once again, that has proven to be a boon for Cross and has escalated her importance to the organization.

“From my perspective, the u.s. is less channel-focused. Over here, everything is channel, channel, channel,” she said.

One of Cross’s immediate responsibilities is to recruit Zultys partners and distributors over to ShoreTel. With her expanded team, the company will be hosting an open day for both existing and prospective reseller partners on September 5.

“My hope is that Zultys’ partners will come join us at ShoreTel,” she said.

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Robert Liu is Executive Editor at TMCnet. Previously, he was Executive Editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. For more articles, please visit Robert Liu's columnist page.