Westcon Group's Wendy O’Keeffe has been promoted to executive vice-president for Asia-Pacific
Westcon Group has promoted A/NZ boss, Wendy O’Keeffe, to executive vice-president for Asia-Pacific.
O’Keeffe has been with the distributor since 2001 and was initially sales and marketing director, before taking over the general manager’s post from Nick Verykios in 2004. Her key focus in the newly created role will be to spearhead Westcon’s regional operations and growth initiatives including establishing operations in Vietnam.
O’Keefe will continue to oversee A/NZ in the short term and remains based in Sydney.
“We’ll keep things largely the same this year, so there are no changes in A/NZ,” she told ARN. “Going into the new financial year, we will figure out our broader plans.
“Most of our vendors are Asia-Pacific, and our customers are becoming more focused on being multinational and having a global footprint. There is a need for a more united front in Asia-Pacific so we can deliver on customer needs, particularly around our global ordering desk.”
In a statement, Westcon’s global president and CEO, Dean Douglas, said it expected Asia-Pacific to account for a significant portion of its global revenue over the next decade.
O’Keeffe’s experience and track record made her the best candidate for the job, he said. She will report directly to Douglas.
“As managing director, she led Westcon Group Australia to 36 consecutive quarters of outstanding performance and has helped our New Zealand operations grow at a rate of 35 per cent each year for the past three years,” he stated.
Westcon recently purchased a 51 per cent stake in Indian joint venture, Inflow, and has operations in Singapore and Malaysia. It plans to expand into Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines during the next three months.
Douglas also flagged Westcon’s Global Procurement Services as major area of growth. The distributor recently signed a global distribution agreement with networking giant and longstanding vendor partner, Cisco Systems, which allows it to conduct cross-border transactions anywhere in the world.
