New Position Created to Drive Product Roadmap, Deliver Solutions to Support Customer Success
CHICAGO – December 21, 2022— Nitel, a leading network-as-a-service provider, announced today the appointment of Mike Frane as Chief Product Officer (CPO), a newly created position to drive the company’s aggressive product roadmap and create innovative solutions to support customer success. As CPO, Frane brings over 20 years of product management experience in managed services, including early adoption of managed SD-WAN, SASE, cloud-based applications, and security. He also pioneered the integration of broadband and cellular access elements for enterprise-wide area networks.
“We added this new position to oversee our product development and solutions creation as we mature as a company,” said Margi Shaw, Nitel’s CEO. “While Mike certainly has the right experience with our current networking business, we are thrilled to leverage his talent and background in bringing leading-edge capabilities to our product roadmap. He brings to us the kind of experience and expertise that will support customer success by aligning Nitel’s solutions with the needs of the channel and their customers now and into the future.”
According to Shaw, the new CPO position was a key step for Nitel as they look to deliver increased customer value in support of enterprise digital transformation.
“Nitel is doing some very interesting things with NaaS and its importance to digital transformation,” said Frane. “We plan to work to enhance Nitel’s managed service offerings core to NaaS, improve our customers overall digital experience and introduce automation to our core service offerings. We think this is key to meeting our channel’s needs and helping our customers be more successful. I am happy to be leading this effort as Nitel moves into the next stage of its evolution.”
Previous to coming to Nitel, Frane worked the past 14 years as Vice President of Product Management at Windstream, where he won a number of awards for the company’s digital experience and service portfolio. While there, he helped transform Windstream from a legacy CLEC into a managed services provider. Prior to Windstream, he was Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Development for Pacific Lightnet, where he led their effort to become the first provider in Hawaii to offer voice over IP services to customers. Frane holds a Bachelor of Science degree in genetics and cellular biology from the University of Minnesota.
According to Shaw, this appointment is a continuation of the company’s growth strategy that started late last year when Cinven, an international private equity firm, made a significant investment in Nitel. “We continue to support our vision with strategic leadership hires,” she said. “We’ve added to the management team in critical areas this year. Mike is another key hire as we work to improve every aspect of our operations to support our vision around customer success.”