Systems integrator Black Box names Ian MacLaughlan as Australian sales boss

Systems integrator Black Box has appointed seasoned telco and channel exec Ian MacLaughlan to lead its Australian sales team.

Hired from Optus, MacLaughlan is Black Box’s most senior executive in Australia as vice president and head of sales, where he is tasked to grow the local sales team and customer base, as well as the company’s competencies.

Formerly known as AGC Networks, Black Box specialises in customer experience, contact centre, cybersecurity and digital workplace solutions for midmarket and enterprise customers. Some of its vendor partners include Avaya, Genesys, NICE, SecureCo, among others. Tony Heywood, currently of Tradewinds, was once the country manager of AGC Networks until 2017.

Speaking to CRN, MacLaughlan said the new role marks his return to the Australian IT channel, after lengthy stints in the telecommunications space.

“When I was approached by Black Box, CEO Sanjeev Verma painted me a picture of the company as it was looking to rebuild the business in Australia, and that was quite exciting to me to be able to get in there and rebuild the brand and team and have something to take to market to be one of the leading global integrators in that space,” he said.

“My background is actually in building businesses, where some of my previous roles involved launching Equinix in Australia and leading a brand new division within Sun Microsystems.”

MacLaughlan said Black Box’s sales team comprises two people in Sydney, one in Melbourne and another in Perth, but has plans to grow that to six or seven over the short term, and even more as Black Box expands its competencies further.

“We've got an excellent base of customers, but now we're actually looking at expanding on that, hence the people that were brought in were more business development people than account management,” he added.

“So they’re out chasing new business across a lot of different areas, including digital workplace, contact centre, customer experience, cybersecurity, et cetera.”

Prior to Black Box, MacLaughlan was senior global account director for Optus Wholesale and Satellite from 2018 to June 2022. Prior to that, he was chief operating officer of South Western Wireless Communications from 2017 to 2018, and briefly at Papua New Guinea-based Digicel Group (now part of Telstra).

MacLaughlan also worked at telco Nextgen Group (now owned by Vocus) in 2016, IBM Australia from 2015 to 2016, software and IT services firm SunGard Financial Systems from 2012 to 2015, Sun Microsystems (and later Oracle) from 2008 to 2012, and colocation provider Equinix from 2001 to 2005.