Equinix, the world's largest provider of retail data center colocation services, has appointed a former Level 3 executive to lead its business in the Americas.

Karl Strohmeyer joined Equinix as president of the Americas after 12 years with the major network carrier, where he held a variety of positions, including, most recently, the role of group VP for the North American enterprise group.

Equinix CEO Steve Smith said Strohmeyer was a good fit for the job because of his experience managing large-scale organizations and working with enterprises and service providers, which were both important customer segments for the colocation company. “This experience combined with demonstrated results in driving high-performing sales teams makes Karl an ideal fit for leading our business in the Americas,” he said.

The 1,200-person North America sales organization he built and oversaw at Level 3 generated about US$2.5bn in revenue, according to Equinix. He led Level 3's channel-partner business before he was appointed to lead North American sales.

He held a variety of roles at NetRail, a broadband and content delivery network service provder, before starting his 12-year career at Level 3. He came to NetRail from the telco BellSouth.

Strohmeyer said Equinix was a market leader that was particularly strong in the network and financial services markets. The company had “an enormous opportunity in cloud and the adoption of cloud services by the enterprise segment,” he added.

“In this new role I look forward to executing on these growth opportunities and delivering against customer demands in the Americas.”

This is a second major executive appointment for Equinix in November, following the appointment of Pete Hayes (formerly of Frontier Communications) to the role of chief sales officer.

The company announced two major hires in October as well. One was the appointment of Ihab Tarazi, who used to lead enterprise network services at Verizon, to the role of CTO.

The other October hire was Debra McCowan, who came to Equinix as chief human resources officer after working at Accelerance Group, a company she co-founded.

Equinix reported US$540.5m in revenue for the third quarter of 2013 – 11% up year over year. Its net income for the quarter was $36.6m, or $0.74 earnings per share.