Commvault appoints Craig Bastow APAC alliances chief as part of sales shakeup

Commvault has appointed Craig Bastow to the newly created role of APAC senior director WW alliances as the vendor unveils its new ANZ business strategy.

Bastow is based in Brisbane and is tasked with leading Commvault’s partner-led strategy, focusing on tech partners like Cisco, Hitachi, Netapp, HPE and AWS.

“Commvault’s first commitment is to its partner ecosystem – to have open, meaningful dialogue and to work on tough problems together,” Bastow said.

“Australia has always been at the forefront of utilising best-of-breed technologies and there’s no better time to be working with our strategic partners to keep driving incredible value by getting the most out of their data.”

Bastow assumed the alliances role following his previous position handling Commvault’s system integrator partners in ANZ. He first joined the vendor in 2014 as territory manager for Queensland and the Northern Territory after stints at GTM Innovation and Transformation and Dell EMC.

The company also restructured and expanded its local sales team on the back of growth of subscription sales and its ecosystem of partners in Australia and New Zealand. Commvault also hired Mark Adams out of IBM to take the role of director of enterprise accounts for ANZ.

“Being a 20-odd year old data protection vendor, we understood that maybe some of the things we have done made it complex for our customers to consume our technology,” Commvault ANZ vice president Rob Malkin said.

“We really went on a path of simplification and streamlining our processes and operations. We had dozens and dozens of SKUs down to just a few and we came up with new pricing models to make it really simple for our customers.”

Malkin said the changes are meant to streamline Commvault’s strategy and make its go-to-market in Australia more expedited, with the appointment of global CEO Sanjay Mirdhandani earlier this year helping accelerate the initiative.

“Australia is a top market globally for Commvault in terms of revenue and is a key growth market for us in APAC,” Malkin said.

“We are committed to providing this market with the best people, processes and technologies to optimise operations, meet stringent service levels, and realise the full value of its data – regardless of time and location.”