ADVA CEO Brian Protiva says his company is after some Tier 1 accounts in North America, and he believes new chief marketing and strategy officer Ron Martin is just the guy to help out.

In discussing his company's plan to become a "billion-dollar business," Protiva highlighted the personnel changes ADVA has made to grow the business and expand globally.

"We need to become industry insiders and have very strong CXO relationships with our customers," Protiva says. That's one of the reasons for the senior management shift that ADVA has seen over the past year.

Since January, ADVA has announced four new members of its executive management team: Ron Martin (CSMO), Jaswir Singh (CFO), Christian Unterberger (chief sales officer), and Dr. Christoph Glingener (CTO). (See ADVA Exec Shakeup Continues, Adva Appoints CMSO, ADVA Names CFO, and ADVA Appoints Sales Chief.)

As the most recent hire, Martin will be charged with bringing his industry contacts to ADVA in its quest to serve the Tier 1 carrier market in North America.

This marks a bit of a strategy shift for ADVA, which has traditionally catered to Tier 2 and Tier 3 players in the North American market. But Protiva says the company can no longer ignore the market opportunity from those larger accounts.

"We're very aware that the market is defined by a very few number of carriers. About 50 percent of the market is determined by two RBOCs. We can't ignore that, and our long-term strategy is to be able to sell into those RBOCs successfully," Protiva says.

"In Europe we sell to Tier 1s and Tier 2s in every major market. We need that same market penetration in the U.S."

As a telecom veteran with five years of experience at Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) and 15 years helping to build Fujitsu's optical business, Martin is well positioned to do that.

"Ron is going to get us there. He has very good relationships in telcos and MSOs," says Protiva. "He is going to get the ear of those companies and he's going to be trusted."

— Ryan Lawler, Reporter, Light Reading