Credit: Dreamstime
The three months ending 31 March might have ended up with the world in a state of lockdown thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, but that didn’t prevent a bunch of tech companies in the local market making some big appointment announcements during the quarter.
The local arms of Huawei, HPE, Canon, Leidos and Konica Minolta were among the organisations to see changes at the top over the course of the three-month period.
Among the veterans of the local IT industry that made moves or announced big changes during the quarter was former Dell EMC A/NZ channel sales general manager Geoff Wright, HPE South Pacific’s new channel and alliances director Julie Barbieri and outgoing Konica Minolta Australian MD David Cooke.
Commvault appointed Callum Eade as APJ sales VP
In early January, Commvault revealed it had appointed Callum Eade as vice president of Asia Pacific and Japan as it worked to strengthen its go-to-market team.
According to the back-up and disaster recovery vendor, Eade joined the company with “extensive sales and business development experience” and is responsible for driving growth across Commvault’s markets in Asia Pacific.
“I am thrilled to join Commvault at this time of monumental market opportunity. Customers globally and everywhere in APJ no longer want but expect to be able to achieve competitive advantage and business value from their data,” he said at the time.
Based in Singapore, Eade previously spent four years at VMare, where he most recently held the title of APJ vice president of Software Defined Data Centre (SDDC).
Equinix named a new MD for Australia
By mid-January, data centre operator Equinix had named Guy Danskine as its new head of Australia following the recent promotion of Jeremy Deutsch.
The managing director appointment saw Danskine relocate from San Francisco back to Sydney where he reports to Deutsch in his new role as Equinix Asia-Pacific president.
Danskine has been with Equinix since 2011 when he first joined as a global account manager in Sydney, which involved working with partners such as cloud service providers, network service providers, systems integrators, plus customers.
Three years later, he relocated to San Francisco with the global account management division and was later promoted to senior director of strategic alliances.
Prior to joining Equinix, Danskine led sales and business development for the service provider unit at Geo Networks in London, which was subsequently acquired by Zayo Networks. Before that, he held leadership and sales roles at Optus and Hutchison Telecoms.
“As Equinix continues to expand, introducing new products and services to customers in Australia, I’m excited to be home and rejoin the team here,” he said in January.
Credit: Equinix
Genesys named Mark Buckley as its new A/NZ head
Also in mid-January, it was revealed that Genesys’ local leadership had changed hands, with sales director Mark Buckley stepping into the role as vice president of Australia and New Zealand.
The move saw Buckley become responsible for Genesys’ 175-strong A/NZ team and its operational strategy after spending seven years in various sales roles at the contact centre solutions vendor.
Before joining US-based Genesys, Buckley was vice president of enterprise at Alcatel-Lucent, having first joined the company in France in 2002.
The role was previously held by Gwylim Funnell, who was promoted to Genesys Asia Pacific senior vice president.
Funnell first took over A/NZ leadership of Genesys in 2016, joining from Telstra Software Group where he was senior vice president.
“I’m thrilled to step into a broader regional position to help accelerate the growth of our company’s cloud and AI solutions across the Asia-Pacific market,” he said at the time.
Oki Data promoted Tony Grima to A/NZ MD
Towards the end of January, print equipment vendor Oki Data Australia promoted Tony Grima to the role of A/NZ managing director, replacing Alex Kawamura.
Kawamura was appointed in the top job in 2017 and has now taken on a new role leading the product development and business division of the business printer and multifunction devices maker in Japan.
Grima joined Oki Data Australia in 2018 as its sales director and previously worked as the Australia general manager for Fuji Xerox Printers.
Grima took on the new role on 29 January with a mandate to firstly focus on introducing the vendor’s new Oki Advantage Partner Program and online partner portal in A/NZ.
His responsibilities also include propelling the company’s sales, marketing, account management, services and partner channel strategy.
“The program focuses on providing the assistance and tools needed to become a successful OKI partner and continue nurturing to build a strong and successful working relationship,” Grima said.
Huawei’s A/NZ partner chief departed amid restructure
In early February it was revealed that former Huawei Australia and New Zealand vice president of channel and commercial Geoff Wright was set to leave the company amid a major restructure.
Credit: Christine Wong Huawei moved to bolster its channel capabilities across Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) through the appointment of Wright as its partner chief in October 2018.
Wright was tasked with building out the vendor’s ecosystem of partners locally, which spans value-added resellers, system integrators and service providers.
“Huawei Enterprise’s aim is to ultimately sell 100 per cent via our channel partners,” said Colin Hu, enterprise managing director at Huawei A/NZ, at the time. “Our channel is critical to support our substantial business growth targets of more than 50 per cent year-on-year for 2019/20.”
Wright came to the role just months after vacating his role as director of channels across Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) at Dell EMC, a role he held for over three years.
Ingram Micro A/NZ boss Felix Wong exited
At about the same time, Ingram Micro’s long-serving leader for Australia and New Zealand, Felix Wong, revealed he would step down.
It was slated that Wong would be replaced by Tim Ament, Ingram’s US-based SVP for advanced solutions.
Ingram Micro said at the time that Wong would stay on for several months to ensure a “smooth transition with the business”.
Wong first began his journey with Ingram Micro in 1992 when he founded and led handheld and wireless technology distributor Advanced Portable Technologies (APT).
This was acquired by Brightpoint Australia, a subsidiary of US-listed Brightpoint Inc, in 2001, which was then itself acquired by Ingram Micro acquired for $US840 million 11 years later.
Ament, meanwhile, has been with Ingram Micro for more than 22 years. In his new role, Ament will report to Diego Utge, executive vice president and group president Asia Pacific and be based in Sydney.
“We are grateful for the work Felix has done in leading our Australia and New Zealand businesses over the past four years and wish him all the best for his future endeavours,” Utge said.
“I welcome Tim to the Asia Pacific leadership team and look forward to having him continue the successes we have had across Australia and New Zealand.”
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