Redwood City, CA � The parade of high-level departures from NeXT continued last month, with long-time sales chief Todd Rulon-Miller announcing his resignation.
Until a replacement for Rulon-Miller is found, NeXT President Peter van Cuylenburg will manage the field sales force in addition to the corporate marketing departments. He will reportedly take a hands-on approach, with sources saying that van Cuylenburg will personally be involved in helping to close business deals. The four area sales directors are also expected to have a great deal of autonomy in running day-to-day operations, sources said.
The headquarters' sales staff, channel sales, and NeXTedge will temporarily report to Tom Dicker, director of North American sales operations.
Rulon-Miller's departure as vice-president of North American sales leaves three vice-president positions vacant at NeXT, as the search continues for the top posts in the software division and corporate marketing. Several director-level jobs also remains open.
Rulon-Miller, hired in 1986 as NeXT employee number 31, left to become president and CEO of Software Alliance Corporation of Berkeley, California, a division of Teknekron that provides software to large financial institutions. It is well known that Rulon- Miller clashed repeatedly with van Cuylenburg, but this seemed to have no role in his departure. According to both NeXT and Teknekron, he left only because he thought the move was a great opportunity.
The NeXT sales staff was disappointed to hear of Rulon-Mil-ler's departure, according to one sales representative, who said, "We sure could have used him to help close the year. Peter is great with the big picture but I hope they hire a sales guy, a great closer like Todd to fill the job."
In related news, Bruce Martin, NeXTSTEP '486 project man- ager, left to return to Sun Micro-systems after a yearlong stint work- ing in NeXT's software division. According to NeXT, Martin will work in the research labs at Sun doing work that is not competitive with NeXT.
Avie Tevanian will take over for Martin and manage the development team working on NeXT-STEP '486. NeXT said that Martin's departure will not affect the already-late schedule for the product (see "Jobs takes shots at Windows").
Donna Simonides also resigned her NeXT post. Simon-ides, director of developer advocates, left to become the manager of the PowerPoint product line at Microsoft.