Hitachi Vantara cuts Aussie channel chief Phil Teague as it merges direct and indirect sales

Phil Teague, Australian channel chief at Hitachi Vantara, has departed the technology vendor, as the company restructures its sales organisation and amends its partner program.

Australian and New Zealand vice president Nathan McGregor wrote to channel partners this week informing them of global changes to the company's partner program as part of a sales restructure.

Hitachi Vantara was born out of the rollup of Hitachi Data Systems with two other business units last year. The changes will see the vendor consolidate its direct and indirect sales teams under a single unit, whereby partner business managers for each sales region will report directly to the local sales director.

The vendor claimed the change would provide partners with better access to customers and Hitachi Vantara’s install base and offer a model that would more tightly integrate partners into the vendor’s sales team. 

The changes resulted in the redundancy of Teague's position as channel chief.

“Phil has been dedicated to our channel market in support of the overall ANZ business objectives and I thank Phil enormously for his leadership over the past five years. I know the team will continue that dedication to our partner network,” McGregor wrote to partners.

Teague joined Hitachi Data Systems as industry and alliance solutions director for ANZ in June 2013.

His prior roles included the general manager of channels and alliances for RSA, and channel account executive, pre-sales partner manager and senior project manager for EMC dating back to 2001.

Teague was contacted for comment.

A Hitachi Vantara spokesperson told CRN the new program was simplified for all partners, replacing more than six existing programs. 

Partners can now engage with Hitachi Vantara around several industry competencies: data infrastructures; data governance and intelligence; cloud; big data insights; and IoT.

Hitachi said the program would increase emphasis on joint business planning, offer more tools for greater efficiency and productivity and improved self-service and automation.