Cassandra Ashworth (VMware)
Former DXC Technology global enterprise alliance sales director Cassandra Ashworth has taken on a new role with VMware as the virtualisation vendor’s new senior director of strategic partnerships, services strategy and sales development for Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ).
In her new role, Ashworth is part of an overall APJ team that oversees partnerships across the region. She will report to VMware's APJ commercial and partner sales vice president Uma Thana Balasingam.
Broadly, the APJ commercial and partner team works hand-in-hand with in-country teams across the region to help drive and engage VMware's partner business as a key part of the vendor's overall sales strategy.
The new channel-facing appointment comes after a one-and-a-half-year stint for Ashworth as worldwide sales vice president at Study Group, a provider of international education.
Prior to joining Study Group, Ashworth spent three years with DXC Technology where, in addition to holding the role of global enterprise alliance sales director, she also spent the better part of a year as head of digital workplace, mobility and IoT sales for Australia and New Zealand.
Before taking up with DXC Technology, Ashworth was channel sales leader at Australian listed data centre operator NextDC, a role she held for more than two years.
She has also done time with the likes of Blackberry subsidiary Good Technology, Dimension Data, Excom Education and JAV IT Group.
The regional appointment comes just weeks after VMware finalised its latest distribution arrangements across the region, choosing to maintain the status quo to a large degree in ASEAN, retaining incumbents Ingram Micro and Tech Data to maintain a strong blend of global and local expertise, which also includes VSTECS, SiS Distribution, Virtus, Technopaq, Elite Technology and CTT.
However, a slight change came in Thailand and Indonesia, with Ingram Micro no longer required to distribute single product lines. Meanwhile in India, Ingram Micro and Tech Data have once again been retained with Redington terminated.
Forming part of a global review, the regional process - which also included Australia and New Zealand markets - resulted in 67 distribution entities taking part across Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), including 22 distributors new to the VMware ecosystem.
VMware chose to retain Westcon-Comstor as a distributor in New Zealand, maintaining the status quo following a 16-month review process severely impacted by Covid-19.
And in Australia, VMware appointed Dicker Data as a new distributor in Australia, keeping Ingram Micro and terminating Tech Data in one of the most impactful channel overhauls in recent years.
This was in addition to Rhipe and Westcon remaining within the VMware Cloud Provider Program (VCPP) — which wasn’t included in the review — and Dell Technologies continuing to distribute VMware solutions, first revealed locally in early 2018.
