Acronis promotes ANZ boss Neil Morarji to lead APAC business

Security vendor Acronis has promoted ANZ boss Neil Morarji to lead its Asia Pacific business as its new APAC general manager.

Morarji replaces APAC vice president Steve Goh, who left in March 2019 to join productivity software vendor Vantiq.

An Acronis spokesperson told CRN Morarji doesn’t directly succeed Goh as the company changed its leadership structure.

The restructuring eliminates some country manager roles, with Morarji reporting into revenue officer Pasha Ershow, while all channel and field sales teams in APAC report directly into Morarji. ANZ channel and enterprise manager David Clarke holds the top ANZ-only role at Acronis.

“Neil joined us at a time of growth, bringing strong leadership and unparalleled expertise in cloud distribution field to the team,” Ershow said.

“Neil’s experience will also be instrumental in developing our service provider network – now 6,500 service providers worldwide and growing rapidly.”

In his new role, Morarji leads the Asia and Australasia sales teams while also developing relationships with local partners and service providers.

He is also tasked to develop and launch the new Acronis partner programs for APAC and help MSPs and channel partners to expand their Acronis offerings.

In response to the ongoing Coronavirus, Acronis aims to ease the workload of its channel partners by combining new partner tiers with “numerous” incentives as the company looks to sustain its growth rate in 2020.

“I’m excited to turn the company’s global strategic thinking into a local execution plan and accelerate business growth in Asia,” Morarji said.

“Now, more than ever, the market needs Acronis’ proven cyber protection solutions. We’re going to continue helping our partners succeed by providing service and support that’s second to none.”

Morarji first joined Acronis in 2018 as ANZ general manager, later taking up the APAC general manager for enterprise.

In 2009, Morarji helped establish the Australian presence for virtualisation and hosting automation firm Parallels in 2009. Acronis and Parallels were both founded by Serguei Beloussov.

After leaving Parallels in 2015, Morarji joined Ingram Micro's cloud platform business, Odin, another business founded by Beloussov, as general manager in 2015.