Juniper Networks has lured Will Hamber to head up its fragmented distribution business across EMEA.

Hamber is moving across from Edge-Core Networks, where he was GM for Europe and Africa from June last year, prior to that he held various management roles at HP, latterly as channel sales director for networking.

He will link up with another former HP colleague Darryl Brick, who ran the networking division in the UK and Ireland until October 2010, before joining Juniper as area partner director.

In a PR blurb, Juniper said Hamber would continue to be based in Paris and would be "responsible for driving distribution channel sales strategies" and pushing partner initiatives including "implementing global distribution programmes".

Across EMEA, Juniper has more than 30 distribution partnerships, including eight in the UK alone – so one of Hamber's first assignments is almost certain to be a spot of rationalisation.

Hamber and Brick did not respond to calls at the time of writing. ®