Fujitsu hires Grant Thornton's Branko Panich to lead A/NZ consulting

Branko Panich (Fujitsu)

Fujitsu has hired IT veteran Branko Panich to lead its consulting business across Australia and New Zealand. 

In the role of consulting executive general manager, Panich will be responsible for scaling Fujitsu's digital transformation goals, alongside leading IT and sourcing strategy, CIO advisory, operating models, cost optimisation and change management. 

Panich previously served as digital transformation head at Grant Thornton and has also held roles at CSC and Deloitte, as well as IT roles at NAB and Westpac during his three-decade career. 

"I am delighted to join Fujitsu and look forward to building and deepening our relationships with both new and existing customers," Panich said. 

"A key area of focus as we expand Fujitsu’s existing consulting business is to help customers accelerate their digital transformation goals, a proven differentiator to help drive growth in the market.” 

Fujitsu A/NZ CEO Graeme Beardsell added that Panich's appointment "fuels [Fujitsu's] ambition to continue growing the Fujitsu business as one of the leading ICT providers in the region". 

"Branko’s extensive consulting experience and in-depth expertise in driving digital transformation projects will be instrumental to our continued commitment to delivering value to our clients," he said. 

Fujitu's local efforts have also seen the company snap up Melbourne data analytics specialist Versor in April this year.

It also formed a partnership with NVIDIA to run the chip firm’s artificial intelligence (AI) computing in its own data centres.

The deal makes Fujitsu one of only 19 data centre operators globally to run NVIDIA’s DGX-Ready Data Centre Program.