Dimension Data headhunts Data#3 cloud manager

Data#3 cloud solutions manager John Griffin has been headhunted to Dimension Data's data centre operations.

Peter Prowse, general manager of Data Centre Solutions at Dimension Data, told CRN that Griffin's remit would span on-premise, consulting, managed services and cloud.

"John takes over the leadership of an exceptional team, and will work closely with our talented sales teams in achieving the ambitions of our clients," said Prowse.

Griffin joined DiData in May and reports to Prowse and Victorian solutions manager Mark Trumble.

"He will drive the sale of this capability, in concert with our cloud services team, to enterprise and public sector accounts in Victoria," said Prowse.

Griffin's move comes after eight years at Data#3, including the past three heading up its cloud strategy across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

At Data#3's JuiceIT conference in Brisbane in March, Griffin gave CRN an insight into the Brisbane-based integrator's hybrid cloud solution to help customers manage on-premise, outsourced and public cloud infrastructure.

Data#3 chief executive John Grant said: "John worked with us and did a terrific job. Our position has always been that people will leave Data#3 for opportunities we can't offer them and they go with our best wishes; a lot of people come back to Data#3.

"John got a great offer to run a significant organisation and we didn't have a significant position to offer him. It was handled well with nothing but goodwill on both sides," added Grant.

He said Griffin was "instrumental in helping Data#3 build the first iteration of our cloud infrastructure", and hinted at some significant appointments in the works.

Data#3's cloud and managed services push comes under the auspices of Sue Carter, who was appointed as general manager of managed solutions in January after major senior leadership positions with Unisys, Fujitsu and CSC.

"We have continued to recruit key people into our business as we develop our second iteration of infrastructure-as-a-service and more broadly maturing our managed services offering," said Grant.