You're hired! The channel's biggest job shifts of 2017

Musical chairs

There's no denying the Australian channel is in a constant state of flux, especially if this year's round of hires and departures go.

In 2017 CRN witness channel chief at a number of major Australian vendors, including Microsoft, HPE, Cisco and IBM, along with a host of big shifts in the resellers, distribution and MSP space.

The following slides chart some of the biggest channel appointments and departures of the past 12 months.

Thomas Duryea Logicalis names Michael Chanter as CEO

In January, following the completion of the acquisition of Thomas Duryea by Loglicalis Group in October the prior year, the newly merged company announced Michael Chanter its chief executive. He was previously the national general manager for Thomas Duryea, with more than 25 years' experience in technology and sales.

The seat was left empty since Logicalis chief executive Basil Reilly left the company in early October 2016.

Thomas Duryea former chief executive Andrew Thomas became an advisor to the board before stepping down completely in April, in order to focus on analytics and business insights specialist AtlasPlato.

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Alibaba hires Australian channel boss out of VMware

Also in January, Alibaba hired former VMwre general business leader David Green to lead the company's Australian cloud business.

Green joined Alibaba in October 2016. A month after he joined, the cloud computing division of the Chinese e-commerce giant announced a data centre facility in Sydney.

Green brings more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry to Alibaba. He started out at Symantec in 2002 as a distribution manager for ANZ, before becoming an inside sales manager and, later, inside sales and renewals manager.

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Insight Australia leadership gets a shake-up

In February, Insight Australia appointed former Empired executive Michael Morgan as its new general manager, following the departure of previous general manager Matt Hendra in November, But when senior vice president and APAC general manager Andrea Dell Mattea later announced her move to Microsoft, Morgan took her place.

Insight then appointed Pat Murphy as executive general manager. He started the role on 1 September.

Della Mattea’s role at Microsoft will see her report to Microsoft Asia president Ralph Haupter, and she will lead the software giant’s business across the Asia-Pacific region, which takes in more than 2000 employees and more than 11,000 Microsoft certified partners.

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Ricoh Australia appoints Fuji Xerox veteran Andy Berry

In February, Andy Berry was appointed managing director of Ricoh Australia, and tasked with driving the office equipment vendor’s renewed strategy in the Australian market.

Part of Berry's role has seen him oversee a restructure as Ricoh seeks to position itself more in the IT services market as the print industry stays flat. The print vendor has onboarded new IT-oriented partners, trimmed stuff and retired the Lanier brand.

Berry brings an IT career spanning more than 25 years, including 13 years with Fuji Xerox, beginning in Europe before rising to become chief customer officer at Fuji Xerox Australia.

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Margrith Appleby departs Lenovo

In March it was revealed that Lenovo's Australian channel chief Margrith Appleby would depart the role some 12 months after assuming the position.

Lenovo said Appleby's move was in line with her intentions since joining the company, saying her decision to move on and explore new opportunities was ""a continuation of the work Appleby started when she joined the business in early 2016"".

In June, Lenovo appointed Brendan Lau as its Australian and New Zealand director for the PC and Smart Devices Consumer and SMB division, effectively replacing Appleby amid the vendor splitting its consumer and enterprise divisions.

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Huawei channel director Leo Lynch departs for StorageCraft

Huawei Australia's channel director Leo Lynch parted ways with the company in March to join backup and disaster recovery vendor StorageCraft as director of sales.

Lynch joined Huawei as director of channel sales in 2015 after four years as sales manager for IBM. He has also held channel sales roles with HP and EMC.

Huawei's NSW channel sales manager Paul Richardson has replaced Lynch.

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Belinda Jurisic takes lead of Veeam channel

In April, less than a month after departing her local channel lead role at Citrix, Belinda Jurisic was named Veeam's ANZ head of channel sales. Jurisic replaced Amaury Dutilleul-Francoeur, who moved to a broader regional role expanding the Veeam presence across Asia-Pacific and Japan.

It was the first of two other major executive moves for Veeam this year, with Australia and New Zealand vice president Don Williams revealing his resignation in October, and making way for senior vice president of Asia-Pacific and Japan Shaun McLagan.

McLagan's appointment marked the consolidation of Australia and New Zealand back into the vendor’s Asia-Pacific region under one leader.

Jurisic will work with a network of more than 2000 resellers and distributors to help ensure Veeam’s ProPartners are able to provide availability solutions to their customers.

Jurisic has more than 15 years of experience in channel partner management. She previously spent 11 years at HP where she held several senior roles. She is also member of the executive council for CompTIA.

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TechnologyOne founder Adrian Di Marco steps down

In May, TechnologyOne founder Adrian Di Marco stepped down as chief executive of the company to take an executive chairman position with the board.

Di Marco was replaced by the company's long-serving chief operating officer, Edward Chung, who has been with TechOne for almost 10 years.

Di Marco has served as chief executive of TechOne for 30 years and will continue to focus on the company's strategy, innovation and creativity to ensure it continues to build future platforms.

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Cisco Australia names Tara Ridley as channel chief

Cisco appointed Tara Ridley as its new partner business group director in May, as Jason Brouwers took on another role in the company.

Ridley oversees all partner relationships and strategies for the network vendor across Australia and New Zealand. She also leads the volume sales group with the goal of growing Cisco's SMB business.

Ridley joined Cisco 10 years ago as the account manager for Optus/Alphawest, and has been promoted several times over the years.

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Intel Australia managing director Kate Burleigh departs after 20 years

Intel Australia's managing director Kate Burleigh revealed her departure from the chipmaker's regional businesses in May. She had been with the company for 20 years.

Burleigh joined Intel in 1996 and was chosen to lead the Australian and New Zealand business as managing director in 2012. Prior to that, Burleigh was ANZ marketing and retail sales director from 2005 to 2012, covering retail channel sales and marketing, consumer, SMB and enterprise marketing.

During her tenure, Burleigh oversaw local operations as Intel transformed from a PC-focused vendor and branched out into areas such as the internet of things and data centre solutions.

A replacement has not yet been identified.

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iiNet founder Michael Malone to chair Superloop

In June, Superloop appointed iiNet founder Michael Malone as executive chairman of the network infrastructure provider. He replaced Superloop founder Bevan Slattery, who took on the chief executive role after 16 months of holding the position in interim.

Malone founded iiNet in 1993 and was chief executive of the internet services provider until 2014. A year later, iiNet was acquired by TPG. He joined Superloop's board of directors in April 2015, and also serves on the boards of NBN, Seven West Media, SpeedCast and Dreamscape, and is the chairman of Perth cyber security firm Diamond Cyber.

Slattery said he was honoured to have Malone guide the company through its next growth phase.

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Cirrus Networks founder Frank Richmond departs

Cirrus Networks founder and former managing director Frank Richard left the company in July, relinquishing the non-executive director role he was previously expected to take up.

The company announced that due to heart surgery undertaken by Richmond earlier in the year, as well as an imminent move overseas, he would step down from the board.

Cirrus Networks managing director Matt Sullivan, appointed as managing director in 2016, acknowledged Richmond’s service.

“Frank’s vision, hard work and dedication to customers and staff has seen the birth of a great organisation and one I am sure will live on as a wonderful legacy to Frank for many years,” he said.

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Darren Adams departs Tech Data after Avnet acquisition

In July, Tech Data's vice present and general manager for Australia and New Zealand Darren Adams left the company after five years at the helm.

In October, the distie finally revealed the appointment former Westcon regional leader Wendy O'Keeffe to replace Adams as country general manager.

O'Keeffe is a veteran of the distribution scene, having worked with Ingram Micro precursor Tech Pacific then spending 15 years with Westcon before departing in 2016.

Adams took leadership of the local arm of former Avnet Australia in 2012, returning home from the US from his position as Avnet's Cisco general manager based in Arizona. He joined Avnet in 2002 as regional sales leader before making the move to the US.

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Microsoft Australia reorganises channel team

In August, Microsoft Australia named Tony Wilkinson as its new partner business and development lead, replacing former channel chief Philip Goldie, amid a major restructure of its Australian channel team under the One Commercial Partner model unveiled in January.

Wilkinson, previously Microsoft's advertising and online country lead, will report into Mark Leigh (pictured), who moved from his role as director of small, midmarket solutions & partners (SMS&P) and now takes the title of One Commercial Partner lead for Australia.

Microsoft's new channel structure is divided into 'build with', 'go to market' and 'sell with'. The divisions include a number of new positions being taken up at the software giant.

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HPE rocked by double departure

Also in August, Chris Trevitt, HPE's South Pacific SMB and channel director, and Nicholas Lambrou, South Pacific partner manager, left the company in an abrupt announcement by the enterprise vendor.

Trevitt told CRN at the time: ""I really enjoyed my time at HPE. They have the right strategy, they have good leadership. I had a task to rebuild their indirect business and I think I have achieved that.""

In October, HPE appointed Marina Fronek as its new Australian head of channel as part of a wider management restructure of the HPE South Pacific sales organisation, according to an internal organisation chart seen by CRN.

Pat Devlin, who had been acting in the channel chief role since Trevitt's departure, is now in charge of territory sales; Chris Weber has moved from his role running services division HPE Pointnext to lead enterprise sales; and Pat Matthews has been put in charge of Pointnext.

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IBM Australia boss Kerry Purcell departs, David La Rose steps up

In October, IBM appointed David La Rose as the managing director of IBM Australia and New Zealand, taking over from Kerry Purcell, who returned to a senior leadership role with IBM Japan after two-and-a-half years in the job.

La Rose entered the role after some 28 years with IBM, including as Asia-Pacific vice president for enterprise and commercial, where he was responsible for the company's sales organisations across the region. His other roles with the company include senior executive roles in Europe and Asia Pacific.

A month earlier, Big Blue named Nigel Peach as its new channel manager, in the role of general manager for business partners for Australia and New Zealand. Peach joined IBM from Pure Storage, where he established and grew the Australian and New Zealand side of the enterprise data and storage vendor's business as regional director.

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Datacom names Greg Davidson as group CEO

In November, Datacom named ANZ chief executive Greg Davidson as its next group chief executive. He will replace a retiring Jonathan Ladd from April next year.

Davidson joined the trans-Tasman IT provider 20 years ago as general manager of internet services. In 2007, he was appointed as chief executive of the New Zealand Systems business and last year his responsibilities were extended to include running the Australian business.

Ladd took over leadership of the wider Datacom Group in 2010, four years after joining the company as a director.

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Google goes on Aussie channel chief blitz

In December it was revealed Google had made three key Australian and New Zealand executive hires as it looks to ramp up its cloud channel business in 2018.

Former IBM ANZ global business partner director Rhody Burton, VMware and Microsoft executive Anita Moorhouse and CA Technologies’ ANZ channel chief Kevin Van Gils will take up new roles in Google Cloud’s Australian and New Zealand team in 2018.

The expanded Google Cloud team will see Moorhouse and Van Gils in managerial roles driving partner success, reporting to Burton, who is set to lead the Google Cloud channel for ANZ. Burton will report into Ash Willis, who retains his position as head of cloud partners for the Asia-Pacific and Japan region.

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