Carpenter elevated to president at Pannaway

Access vendor Pannaway has named its vice president of business development, Mark Carpenter, to be its next president. Carpenter succeeds Gary Davis, who will retain his chairman role and also take on the CEO title, a position that previously was vacant.

Carpenter, who spent five years in various positions, including vice president of partner development at Tut Systems, will be responsible for more of the strategic direction of the company, including developing and maintaining relationships with various partners, the financial community and others. Davis, 27-year Navy veteran and long-time Cabletron executive before coming to Pannaway, will head up the day-to-day operational aspects of the company.

“What’s happened over the last year is Pannaway has grown from an up and coming new kid on the block,” Carpenter said. “We’ve gotten so much traction over the last year it made sense to make sure we have someone focused on all of the outward bound strategic opportunities.”

Carpenter doesn’t have any radical strategic changes to the company, but is likely to lean on the company’s emerging voice-over-IP play, which he said has opened up several new avenues with both larger partners and larger carriers. Traditionally, the Portsmouth, N.H.-company has been focused on the small, independent telco market. That won’t change, Carpenter said.

“Our bread and butter is coming out of the IOC space, and we’ll continue to do that,” he said. “We’re working with some of the larger, what you’d consider tier-two IOCs. Our primary-line voice over IP looks like it’s really taking off. We’re now offering it as a standalone and that opens up a whole lot of new opportunities.”

Pannaway has announced interoperability agreements with MetaSwitch and CopperCom, but Carpenter added that larger players are suddenly becoming more interested.

“The vision for where I see the future is the guys focused solely in switching that divested DLCs are now rethinking that because they’re seeing voice over IP and telco TV growth in the access space,” he said. “I’m in some large labs right now.”