Jacob Pereira (Zoom)
Jacob Pereira, former senior director of channels for Nutanix in Asia Pacific and Japan, has taken on a new role as head of channels for Zoom in Asia Pacific (APAC).
The new role, which Pereira started this month, sees the Singapore-based executive lead the vendor's partner sales unit, with the new recruit responsible for managing the company's partner ecosystem in Asia Pacific, a growth region for the video conferencing platform vendor.
As such, Pereira is overseeing the strategy of Zoom’s APAC partner ecosystem, which includes distribution, resellers, referral partners, service providers and systems integrators.
He now reports to Zoom’s head of global business development and channel, Laura Padilla, who is based in California.
Pereira spent more than four-and-a-half years at Nutanix as the cloud software and hyperconverged infrastructure solutions vendor’s channel lead in the local region before departing to join Zoom.
Early last year, Pereira oversaw the rollout of a support program to help Nutanix partners navigate the Covid-19 crisis in Asia Pacific, propped up by enhanced financial assistance.
Nutanix is yet to officially announce Pereira’s replacement but has confirmed that its head of ecosystem marketing, Michael Magura, is acting as its interim channel lead in Asia Pacific and Japan.
“Nutanix confirms that Jacob has resigned from Nutanix, and we wish him well,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement.
Prior to joining Nutanix in 2017, Pereira spent more than 15 years with Dell, occupying various roles, including Asia Pacific and Japan storage and solutions director and Asia Pacific and Japan marketing director for Dell Software Group.
In June, Zoom revealed it had hired former Microsoft Asia Pacific (APAC) vice president of sales and marketing operations Ricky Kapur as its new head of APAC.
In the newly created post, Kapur reports to the video conferencing vendor's head of international, Abe Smith, and is responsible for defining its go-to-market strategy for key APAC markets including Australia and New Zealand, ASEAN, China, Hong Kong SAR, India, Korea and Taiwan.
In September, the video conferencing vendor launched a new partner program aimed at selling licences for its Zoom Phone bring your own carrier (BYOC) service.
The US vendor launched the pilot program for selected resellers that would “meet the requirements” for its Zoom Phone BYOC, with plans to “welcome a wider pool of resellers by the end of the year”.
