Klasie Holtzhausen (Veeam)
Forcepoint regional director for the local market Klasie Holtzhausen has been named as Veeam Software’s new director of channel sales across Australia and New Zealand, replacing Janet Docherty in the role.
In his new role, Holtzhausen will report to the backup, disaster recovery and data management solutions vendor’s A/NZ vice president, Gary Mitchell, and will be responsible for leading Veeam’s regional channel teams that work with 2,500 active partners and distributors in the region.
Holtzhausen will specifically be focused on driving Veeam’s "reformed" channel strategy, growing both tier one and tier two partners across Australia and New Zealand by helping them build their service offerings.
The new appointee comes to the role after more than one-and-a-half years at cyber security vendor Forcepoint, which he joined in late 2019 from Symantec, the enterprise security business of which was acquired by Broadcom that same year.
During his two-decade career, Holtzhausen has also held senior regional roles at IBM, Dell Software and CA Technologies, another company snapped up by Broadcom.
“Klasie’s proven success in building multiple routes to market with partners, as well as delivering outstanding sales practices and results, is exceptional,” Mitchell said. “Veeam drives 100 per cent of its sales through the channel and we are fully committed to enabling our partners to increase and diversify their value-propositions for customers by offering modern data protection solutions across cloud, virtual, SaaS [software-as-a-service], Kubernetes and physical environments, delivered either as-a-service or on-premises.
“Veeam prides itself in the way it collaborates with partners and, with Klasie’s unparalleled experience in boosting channel growth, we’re looking forward to having him at the reigns to continue the successful growth of our A/NZ partners in helping our joint customers overcome challenges of the digital transformation era,” he added.
Holtzhausen said he was pleased to have the opportunity to work with Veeam’s network of partners and help take them on the journey with Veeam to achieve growth and success across AN/Z.
“Veeam has had an incredible track record in the past 18 months with the success of v11, completing support for all three major public cloud providers and consistent double-digit revenue growth,” he said. "I’m excited to be joining a 100 per cent channel company which ensures its partners are always at the core of every decision Veeam makes.
“This puts Veeam in a very strong position to focus on supporting our partners’ innovation and cloud value-propositions, as well as providing the tools and skills required to support digital transformation in the most simple, flexible and reliable way. Helping partners manage customer risk on their transformation journey is the number one goal,” he added.
Holtzhausen’s appointment follows Docherty’s departure from the company. Veeam appointed Docherty as head of channel sales for A/NZ in May 2019. Her appointment followed predecessor Belinda Jurisic’s promotion to the then newly-created role of Asia Pacific and Japan channel director, which she oversees from Singapore.
Docherty joined the back-up storage vendor from Veritas, where she spent four years in senior channel sales roles. Prior to that, she spent eight years at Symantec and three at Data#3 during a two-decade IT career.
In February this year, Veeam revealed it had combined two teams in the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region, expanding the remit of Jurisic to take charge of its cloud service provider (VCSP) team, in addition to her current duties within the channel portfolio.
VCSP previously ran as a separate business unit, and was combined into one unit in APJ following the departure of former APJ cloud and services providers vice president Asanga Wanigatunga, who left the vendor in January after three years.
