Savvis, a CenturyLink company and global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises, today announced that it has strengthened its cloud and sales management teams through the additions of James R. Parker as senior vice president, Americas sales, and Daniel Patton as vice president and general manager of cloud services.

Parker, who formerly held a senior sales position with Microsoft, oversees all activities within Savvis' sales channels in the Americas. He also is responsible for sales support functions, including technical design, renewal strategies and sales effectiveness. Patton, who previously ran the Americas sales team for Amazon Web Services, is responsible for driving the growth strategy of Savvis' enterprise-class Savvis Symphony cloud computing platform.

"Savvis continues to expand in size and scope, and the extensive experience that James and Daniel bring to Savvis will further help us continue to innovate and lead the market in enterprise cloud, managed hosting and colocation," said Bill Fathers, president of Savvis. "We're confident their unique abilities will be a great fit with our global growth strategy."

Parker brings nearly 20 years of enterprise software sales, service and development experience to his new position. At Microsoft, Parker was most recently general manager of the enterprise and partner group, Central Eastern Europe. In this position, he was responsible for more than $1 billion in sales of software and related services across 32 countries in support of more than 1,600 corporate clients. Parker also served Microsoft in a similar position for the company's northwest U.S. district and greater China region. Before joining Microsoft in 1998, Parker was a consultant in Texas for Dell and American Medical Management, and a senior programmer analyst and consultant for IBM in Italy. He began his career as a software developer for Manitoba Telephone Services in Winnipeg, Canada.

"As cloud services continue to assume their place at the very core of IT, Savvis has the resources and reputation to compete anywhere in the world," Parker said. "I'm looking forward to helping Savvis extend its leadership in new vertical and geographic markets in the United States and beyond."

With more than 20 years of experience in the technology space, including roles in sales, product development and product marketing, Patton brings a wealth of experience to Savvis. At Amazon Web Services, he drove cloud adoption across the start-up, small and medium business (SMB) and enterprise markets. Patton has also managed regional and global sales teams for IBM and Rational Software, and started his career at Boeing where he spent nine years in product development, product marketing and sales.

"I am excited to join Savvis and work with the team that brought the first enterprise-class cloud to market," Patton said. "Enterprise clients require a well-performing and secure cloud platform with solid service-level agreements in order to run their production applications. Savvis Symphony is that platform, and I look forward to driving its growth."