Trend’s Poulos made redundant

Trend Micro managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Chris Poulos, has been made redundant following a restructure of its local management team based on customer segments.

Poulos was hired just over five years ago as a sales director before replacing former managing director Kenny Liao in May 2001.

He was general manager, services, Asia-Pacific and sales director for Australia and New Zealand at Lotus between 1995 and 1999.

The Trend Micro business has been split across enterprise, consumer and SMB customer segments which each have a sales director reporting to Asia-Pacific headquarters in Taiwan.

The changes have seen Damian Thompson, George Farah and Dave Patnaik assume responsibility for the enterprise, consumer and SMB markets respectively.

“It’s a redundant position [and] I understand [why],” Poulos told CRN. “A lot of software companies do that when they are doing it by line of business.”

Poulos said he grew the company from eight employees to 50 and from revenues of $4 million to $35 million during his tenure. “I’ve done well here, if they want to change it, then that’s life,” he said.

He would stay in the IT industry, preferably with “a company that needs a good operational managing director to take it to the next level”.

Trend Micro CEO Eva Chen, said in a statement: "In the nearly five years during which Chris has been managing director of the Australian and New Zealand operations, the company's growth in those countries has been outstanding."