Industry veteran on Gentrack

Former Oracle and SAP senior executive Leigh Warren has joined the board of directors at utility billing and customer management software vendor Gentrack.

Warren’s appointment follows an extensive career in IT spanning more than two decades. He has held executive positions in a number of blue chip companies throughout Australia, New Zealand, Asia Pacific, Europe and Africa, including more recently the role of chief operations officer for SAP in North Asia.

“I was attracted by the strong growth prospects in the Australian region for the Gentrack business and its products,” said Warren. “Working with Oracle and SAP has provided many insights into how enterprise solutions and services are being delivered around the world – insights that I hope will contribute to the growth of Gentrack in the utility space.”

Warren has been chief executive for several multinational companies including Tandem Computers and Oracle, where he was managing director for A/NZ during the acquisition of the PeopleSoft and Retek organisations. He has also been vice president of business development for Asia Pacific. Previously he served on the boards of Oracle in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, as well as being a member of the Council for Economic Development in Australia.

James Docking, CEO of Gentrack, said: “Leigh will be instrumental to the overall strategic direction of the Gentrack business. He joins a growing list of prominent local industry leaders who have joined Gentrack, including John Clifford from world-leading metering business Landis+Gyr, and Cesare Tizi, the former CIO of AGL. Together, we will be driving the Gentrack team to win business in the utility industry against our much larger US and European-based competitors.”

Kissling gets Interwoven

Content management provider Interwoven has appointed Jeff Kissling as senior vice president of engineering. Kissling will lead all aspects of Interwoven’s engineering and development efforts globally and will report to Joe Cowan, Interwoven’s CEO. Kissling brings nearly 30 years of experience in leading engineering teams in the development of enterprise-class technologies. Most recently, he was senior vice president of technology transition for JDA Software Group.

Obluk joins AMTSO board

Karel Obluk, CTO at AVG Technologies, has been appointed to the initial board of the new Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organisation (AMTSO). AMTSO was founded due to industry-wide concern about an increasing disconnect between what anti-malware technologies actually do, and testing methodologies to evaluate them. As anti-malware solutions have become more complex, many traditional tests are no longer able to properly evaluate product effectiveness.

Crowning appointment

Wireless site operator Crown Castle Australia has a new sales director — Jason Horley, the former general manager, communications for Futuris. In his previous role he had overall responsibility for the company’s telecoms investments and direct management of Elders Communications, where he established Elders as a rural ISP selling dial-up, ADSL and satellite broadband services. He also co-led the OPEL bid, and held a board position in the joint venture.

Sybase recruits Brito

Sybase subsidiary, Sybase 365, has appointed Adam Brito as business development director for peer-to-peer messaging interoperability in A/NZ. In this new role Adam will manage company relationships with key operators such as Telstra, Optus, Vodafone AU and NZ, Hutchison and Telecom NZ. He will develop and expand mobile messaging interoperability sales and extend international messaging routes and volumes for SMS and MMS traffic and international roaming.

OKI’s Queensland boost

Printing vendor OKI Printing Solutions has welcomed a new Queensland channel manager as it expands its colour printing product range. Mike Ford has extensive channel and government sales experience within Canon Australia (business machines and consumer imaging products). He will be working closely with distributors, wholesalers, dealers and resellers. His appointment coincides with OKI’s recent launch of C710, which forms part of its A4 colour range.

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