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Datacom taps Oakton talent for software and integration lead

Bob Peebles leaves top job at struggling integrator

Datacom Australia has named former Oakton executive general manager, Bob Peebles, to lead its software and integration business.

The company confirmed that Peebles will be charged with management and operations of the software and integration business.

Peebles spent over 11 years at Oakton, initially as Victorian sales manager. During his tenure, he also held senior roles in client management, marketing and partner relationships before heading up the company’s ACT operations and ultimately country-wide operations.

South African-based integrator, Dimension Data, purchased Oakton in 2014, for approximately $171 million.   

Datacom recently parted ways with Anastasia Para Rae who left her position as as a learning and development specialist for the technology provider to take the top job at Kaspersky A/NZ.

Bob Pebbles - Datacom director of software
Bob Pebbles - Datacom director of software

The company has also recently announced its support for key partner Cisco’s digital transformation strategy.

Datacom Associate Director of Transformation and Enablement, Mark Hile, spoke to ARN on the ground at Cisco Live ’17 in Melbourne, highlighting the successes the IT solutions provider has had through its multi-year partnership with the networking vendor.

According to Hile, one of the success stories that has arisen from the long-term partnership between the two companies has been the development of the Datacom National Network, which is aimed at linking Datacom's entire nine data centre footprint across Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.

“About 18 months ago, we started building our [Datacom National Network] on Cisco on Cisco technologies," Hile said at the time.

"That has been live for about 12 months now and we’re continuing to work with Cisco on our network, which allows customers to transition smoothly to cloud.

"We are continually working with Cisco around new technologies and we will evaluate, based on customer feedback, if we will commercialise it. But we see great opportunities with Cisco," he said.

While it is unclear how involved Peebles will be with vendor interaction, it is likely that unified strategies will be key for the integrator going forward.