Asanga Wanigatunga - Veeam's new Global Cloud Group senior director for Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ).
Veeam Software is pinning its cloud growth hopes in the local region on VMware’s end-user computing cloud services director for Asia Pacific and Japan, Asanga Wanigatunga.
The backup, disaster recovery and virtualisation management software vendor announced the appointment of Wanigatunga to the role of Global Cloud Group senior director for Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), on 11 May.
In his new role, Wanigatunga will be charged with growing Veeam’s cloud business across the region.
Wanigatunga will be based in Sydney and responsible for leading the company’s teams from across the region to meet Veeam’s revenue goals through close collaboration with channel partners.
Prior to his role as VMware’s director for end-user computing cloud services in APJ, where he helped to develop the company’s end-user computing cloud ecosystem across the region, Wanigatunga spent almost seven years with the virtualisation software vendor in various roles.
Wanigatunga’s previous role saw him building go-to-market strategies around VMware’s desktop remoting technologies and enterprise mobile management services out of VMware operated and Service Provider/Telco cloud footprints
While at VMware, Wanigatunga grew his line of business at a rate of more than 130 per cent year-on-year, and was instrumental in constructing cloud-led multimillion-dollar competitive bids with system integrators and system outsourcers (SISOs), and mobile operators in the region.
According to Veeam Global Cloud Group vice president, Paul Mattes, this past track record has placed Wanigatunga in a good position to help grow Veeam’s cloud business locally.
“Asanga’s extensive experience in leading teams further underscores our commitment to helping organisations adopt a multi-cloud strategy that helps them deliver availability for their customers and partners,” Mattes said.
For Wanigatunga, the new role represents an opportunity to tap into the local channel in his efforts to build the company’s cloud services locally.
“I am honoured to be given the opportunity to lead Veeam’s already impressive cloud team across the APJ region,” Wanigatunga said. “Veeam is at its heart committed to empowering businesses to deliver for their customers by enabling them to be available around the clock.
“The cloud represents an enormous opportunity for organisations to provide always-on services to their customers and employees. I’m excited to help Veeam cloud and service providers, and our channel partners with the architecture to grow their businesses and, deliver world-class services to our joint customers,” he said.
Wanigatunga’s appointment comes just over a month after Veeam announced its appointment of former Citrix brass, Belinda Jurisic, to lead its channel charge across Australia and New Zealand, replacing Amaury Dutilleul-Francoeur as head of channel sales.
Jurisic was appointed to the role less than four weeks after announcing her resignation as channel sales manager, A/NZ, at Citrix, and will report directly to Veeam A/NZ Vice President, Don Williams.
