Numara aims for Masters stroke

Numara Software has appointed Geoff Masters as its vice president of Asia Pacific sales to support its IT operations and prepare its push into the cloud.

It was part of a global expansion that saw the software solutions provider buy former Australian partner Salamander Services and introduce sales operations here. Masters, who was formerly Tripoint Corporation general manager, will head Numara's Sydney office to grow its sales and support.

Numara will offer services to the enterprise and small businesses, replicating its success in the US and Europe.

“From a timing point of view, it also sits well with the all-over market in APAC being on a growth curve,” Masters said.

“We’ve also seen some of our competitors in Symantec, CA and BMC doing a lot of consolidation, so it’s an opportunity for our technology to be a bit more focused and easy to obtain.”

Numara’s offerings included Track It, help desk and asset management software for SMEs and its FootPrints IT management software that Masters said will be its main instigator for growth. He said customers can similarly expect to see a push towards the software-as-a-service marketplace.

“We have a product there that in the previous structure we weren’t promoting heavily, it’s much easier to do that now as a full subsidiary, so you’ll see us do a lot more in the cloud-based offering,” he said.

“It’s something we’ve been marketing overseas but not in this region. It’s the same product, service desk and asset management but we’ll be selling as SaaS. And that’s really reflective of the market’s current appetite.”

Masters signalled expansion plans for staff and partner opportunities, expecting the next year to see staff numbers grow from 12 to 20 across the region, thanks to the introduction of a 24/7 support hub in Melbourne, with others to follow. And it has recently hired former Symantec New Zealand sales manager Andy De Raat as the regional manager for Australia South and was looking to hire more people especially in Melbourne and New Zealand.

Numara’s APAC vision for the next year included adding four partners in each state or region, expanding from the current eight. He was looking to benefit from what he called a shift away from larger vendors.

“We’re actually seeing a number of partners emerge at the moment that are ex-partners of larger vendors,” he said.

“Companies that are long-term partners of Symantec, CA and BMC are finding the relationships are not what they are looking for, and we are finding opportunities to work with those entrenched businesses.

"These are Australian and New Zealand-based companies that are privately held; they would tend to have in the order of 20 to 50 people and 80 percent of revenue coming from existing system management vendors.”