Ex-Huawei channel chief Paul Richardson joins HPE

Former Huawei Australia channel chief Paul Richardson has joined HPE in the role of national partner and service provider sales manager.

The sales leader, who has many years of channel experience under his belt, was confirmed in the new role by HPE. Richardson will report to HPE general manager of channels and alliances Marina Fronek.

"We are delighted to have Paul on board as Paul has shown a high level of commitment to the partner community in numerous roles and focusses on leading with the channel," Fronek said.

"This was a very considered appointment as we ensure that all of our HPE teams truly align to our core value of partnership first and the power of collaboration. Paul’s appointment brings further strength to HPE’s strong pedigree in working with partners and HPE’s commitment to enabling partners to grow their businesses."

The announcement follows former Dell EMC channel chief Geoff Wright taking over the head of channel role at Huawei, taking on the title of vice president channel and commercial, Huawei Technologies, at the beginning of October.

During his tenure at Huawei Technologies Australia, Richardson served as channel sales manager, where he was focused on building a partner network to sell the vendor’s ICT range, including its enterprise servers, storage and networking business.

Richardson’s departure and Wright’s appointment come at a challenging time for Huawei, with the Australia federal government effectively banning the company in August from selling 5G kit to Australian telcos.

Prior to Huawei, Richardson held several senior sales roles across notable ICT vendors in Australia, including IBM, where he was ANZ global business partner and CSI sales manager for three years; Toshiba, where he held the title of national corporate sales manager for two-and-a-half years; and Lenovo, where he joined as a sales manager in 2005 before becoming sales director in 2009.