Howard Fyffe exits Veritas to lead Vast Data in Australia and New Zealand

Departing Veritas ANZ managing director Howard Fyffe has joined all-flash universal storage solutions vendor Vast Data, where he will lead the four-year-old company’s operations in Australia and New Zealand.

Fyffe said Vast Data had existing customers and revenues in the ANZ region, and that his appointment would be an opportunity to build on that. He will remain based in Sydney.

The executive said Vast Data appeared on his radar in 2020 while pursuing new opportunities. He was introduced to the company through a former colleague and an opportunity subsequently arose to help grow the business in ANZ.

“My heart has always been in the data centre. I've always been really passionate about it. An underpinning part of Vast’s capability is RDMA, or remote direct memory access, a technology that allows you to move data very quickly through the data centre,” Fyffe told CRN.

“With what they are doing and having seen their customers’ reactions, they are a disrupter. From how they build their architecture, to the value it provides, to how it simplifies storage, there are just some really great stories there. They are kicking goals in the market and growing and I’m thrilled to join them.”

Fyffe’s new role brings a close to a three-year stint with Veritas. After restructuring measures took place in 2020, the backup vendor's local leadership will now be based out of Singapore.

“I had a great three years with Veritas. There was an opportunity to fix a number of things that I thought could be improved, namely engaging with the channel and really getting to understand how the channel makes money and goes to market,” Fyffe said. “We saw great improvement there, and I feel like I left it in a good place. Not only that, I got to work with some great people.”

In addition to Veritas, Fyffe has amassed a number of years in tech and channel roles, including more than a decade with Cisco in senior data centre roles before leading Nutanix in ANZ as country manager between 2016 and 2018.

With a fresh start for 2021 on the cards, Fyffe was optimistic of what 2021 would bring both in the storage space and for Australian channel partners.

“I think there is a lot of innovation that continues to happen, some may have thought there wasn’t room for innovation in storage and yet here Vast is growing and doing amazing things in that space,” he said.

“As an IT provider, you should always be keeping an ear out for who you can have as a partner that can serve as a point of differentiation in your offerings. Solutions that may give you a market-disrupting capability or an adjacent value-add to your core offering. I think that’s always something to be looking at.

“I think also, the partners I see doing really well are the ones that really make a commitment to an offering, versus being in an open marriage with all vendors. Now that can work if you have enough scale and size, but I think partners that really make a commitment to a stack or offering with a vendor they lead with will do very well.”