Neels du Plooy (Citrix)
Citrix Australian and New Zealand (A/NZ) director for channels and alliances Neels du Plooy has stepped down from his role, citing his plans to pursue another opportunity.
Announcing the departure on LinkedIn, du Plooy said he was taking a short break to start “a new and exciting role”.
“There's no bad feelings leaving Citrix,” he told ARN. “It's just the game - it's one of those things where opportunity comes knocking that probably suits me a lot better. It's with people that I know really well and it was a hard decision.
“I can only wish Citrix, the people - only the very best through what will be a very interesting and exciting six months ahead with the merger and acquisition, and privatisation happening.”
Citrix confirmed the departure to ARN in a statement and said it will work closely with partners and customers to ensure there's no impact to the business.
“Citrix would like to thank Neels for his contributions to the business. Citrix remains committed to our customers, partners and the A/NZ market and will ensure a smooth transition,” the statement read.
Part of that transition will see du Plooy’s role temporarily headed up by Joanne Dean, Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) director for the channel, who he sees as a good fit for role as recruitment gets underway.
Du Plooy first joined up Citrix in April 2021 amid the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which he said didn’t make the journey through the role any easier.
Previously, Du Plooy spent nine years at VMware A/NZ, serving as head of channels for the last five before his departure in February last year.
However, during his time as director of alliances and channels, du Plooy said there were three major points that stood out for him including rebuilt the vendor’s channel organisation in A/NZ; ensuring the sales and channel teams were operating as 'one' and being part of the A/NZ leadership alongside managing director, Martin Creighan.
“It took a lot of time, but I completely rebuilt the partner operating model in how we go to market and how we both trade internally as well as externally,” du Plooy said.
“I rolled out the new operating model which is really paying off dividends, it's really starting to show results.
“The most important thing out of all of this was making sure that we have a channels organisation that is really operating very closely with both the sellers here at Citrix as well as our partner centres.”
Regardless of the figurehead of Citrix’s A/NZ team, du Plooy said that he feels the vendor’s channel efforts have established a strong foundation to operate without him.
“We rolled out a plan at the start of this year; everybody knows what to do. I spent a lot of time with everyone making sure that they know where to go and we are now on a good trajectory,” he said.
