NBN Co has acted on plans to build out an ecosystem of technology providers in Australia, through the appointments of Craig Bovaird and Andrew Charitou as ICT channel managers.
Bovaird joins from Ingram Micro where he was the national sales manager for cloud solutions for almost four years, with a responsibility for building the distributor's cloud channel program.
Revealed via social media, Bovaird said he decided to take up a fresh challenge for 2018 by joining the new ICT channel program team.
"One week in and seeing the work Keith and the team have already built, I’m really looking forward to 2018 and building out another great initiative for our channel partners,” Bovaird wrote via LinkedIn.
In addition, Bovaird has also worked for Spark New Zealand and Renaissance Limited, where he was retail and telco channel manager for four years.
Furthermore, he’s also been a sales support and procurement manager for Maclean Computing and channel manager for Connect Cloud Services, in the UK, for almost four years.
Bovaird will work alongside Charitou, who joined NBN Co in November.
Charitou has worked for Telstra, Macquarie Telecom, OfficeMax Australia and Avansus, with extensive channel experience across Australia.
Specifically, Charitou held a national general manager of business partner channels role with Telstra for almost two years after being a national sales manager for eight.
At Macquarie Telecom, where he worked from 2013 to 2015, he was a group partner manager.
“Craig and Andrew will be working with selected ICT software, hardware and cloud vendors and distributors to develop joint partner engagement and go to market activity ahead of the full program launch in the first quarter of 2018,” NBN Co general manager of channel management, Keith Masterton, told ARN.
“The appointment of these roles will ensure we are well positioned to work with industry to help meet the needs of Australian businesses as they move services to the nbn access network.
“We want to ensure that we have the appropriate skills and resources to ensure we can support participating ICT professionals effectively and in turn help provide a good customer experience for businesses using services over nbn access network."
After starting the search for channel talent in September, the company behind the rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN) launched its channel pilot program in early December, with Westcon-Comstor, Computer Troubleshooters Australia, Telstra and Vocus Communications jumping on board.
The program is intended to give IT providers tailored information about the steps businesses need to take when connecting to the NBN, along with a suite of additional support services to assist with the migration process.
