AMD to grow Australian head count

AMD intends to expand its presence in Australia and New Zealand through its channels and head count, beginning with the appointment of a new country manager.

Brian Slattery was appointed as country manager for AMD Australia and New Zealand, the company announced yesterday at the launch of its 12 core server chip in Sydney.

In his role, Brian is responsible for sales and marketing activities as well as developing partnerships that enable customers to position their AMD platforms competitively in the market.

Slattery said AMD is working closely with local partners such Xenon and Digicor to "develop servers that best fit the Australia market" and he wants to ensure "partners are going out there and offering the AMD option."

"We want them out there talking about what the differences are in AMD technology, talking about what we can do with memory and making sure that they're having different conversations with their customers.

"For us, our partners are absolutely critical to us, we're very dependent on them being able to articulate the AMD message well in the field and have those conversations with customers."

Slattery replaced Caleb Leung who was promoted to consumer business development and graphics director for South Asia, which includes Australia.

According to Slattery, Leung will pay more attention to AMD's commercial retail channel.

"[His] new role is specifically focused on the retail channels and how we're engaging with Harvey Norman, JB-HiFi and the likes.

"He will make sure their sales people understand the AMD platform and understand our vision strategy and go to market," said Slattery.

Furthermore, Slattery said the company currently employs 10 staff but plans to grow to pre-recession levels.

"With the recession, we had to make some cutbacks but now we're reinvesting in the business again and trying to grow appropriately in time with the market," he said.

Tuesday, AMD announced the availability of its new server platform featuring 8 and 12-core x86 processors.

Slattery said AMD has launched globally with both HP with Dell, but also has Acer onboard as a new server partner.

"I've had some of the best conversations I've had since joining AMD in the past couple of weeks with partners," said Slattery.