L-R: Aidan Tudehope, Mike Foster (Macquarie Government)
Macquarie Government has hired ex-Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) CEO Mike Foster as director of strategic growth to lead its defence and national security capabilities.
In the newly created role, Foster will also lead the Macquarie Telecom-owned business unit’s pursuits into the aforementioned sectors, including vertically integrated cyber-security, cloud, data centre and telecommunications services.
In addition to his top role at Fujitsu A/NZ — a position he held for nine years until November 2020 — Foster's most recent gig was with Brennan IT to lead its government division, which he held for 12 months up until January this year.
In addition, he also spent time at Telstra Clear, Telstra and EMC prior to becoming part of Dell. He currently remains in an advisory capacity with Carbonix, Mentor List, provenio.ai and OverIP.
Macquarie Government managing director Aidan Tudehope said Foster’s appointment was indicative of the business unit’s commitment to investing in local talent.
“Mike’s deep experience leading large and complex ICT programs for Defence will be critical for Macquarie Government as we continue to build on our capability offering to federal and state government customers,” he said.
“This appointment comes during a time of unprecedented growth for Macquarie Government. In January alone we welcomed and on-boarded 10 new starters and we expect that to grow by a further 40 in the coming months as we fill a range of roles in security, cloud and DevOps areas.”
On his appointment, Foster said his decision to join Macquarie Government came down to the business unit’s track record of protecting cyber threats against Australian government agencies.
“The expertise the Macquarie team has gained from providing cyber-security, infrastructure and cloud services to a wide range of federal government agencies is unparalleled,” he said.
“That expertise is highly valued by the federal government and I’m excited to be leading the company’s next evolution to further support the defence and national security sectors.”
Foster’s appointment comes a month after Macquarie Government joined the NSW government’s cloud purchasing panel in January by signing a whole-of-government agreement with the state government.
