From my experience, I would say it's a horizontal move. I had been out of the industry for 5 years, an eternity in IT. Attempting to move into a sales-related role was my strategy to use my experience in both tech and communications and hopefully find a company willing to take a chance on me. It worked. Being able to have a friendly conversation seems to be a challenge for most IT folks. I currently enjoy not being "in the trenches" everyday putting out fires. Plus, I'm not frontline sales so I'm not on the phone all day or head-down in a contract negotiation. It's also provided a great opportunity to get up to speed with automation (looking at you, Ansible ;) and containerization on the company's dime.