Veritas appoints Pure Storage's Pete Murray as ANZ managing director

Enterprise backup vendor Veritas has appointed Pete Murray as its new managing director for Australia and New Zealand.

Murray, who was hired out of Pure Storage, will be responsible for leading Veritas' overall strategy, sales operations and new business growth in the ANZ region.

As managing director, Murray will also focus on strengthening strategic relationships with partners and customers, as well as spearheading initiatives to promote Veritas “as an employer of choice with an inclusive and people-centric culture”, .

“I am super excited to be at Veritas - they are indisputably the market leader in this space and have plenty of clients,” Murray told CRN.

“If you are a bank or any form of financial services institution, a utility, or a government organisation, the amount of global enterprise customers that Veritas has is unbelievable.

“The opportunity to lead what has already proven itself to be a highly passionate team of people at Veritas in Australia to do bigger and better things is super exciting.”

Murray added that Veritas channel partners should expect to see a much richer portfolio than what the company had been known for, specifically the NetBackup and Enterprise Vault offerings.

"We've made a couple of acquisitions and we've evolved some products including [NetBackup and Enterprise Vault] over the years and we'll be refreshing the channel with the broad scale of opportunity that Veritas can take to market."

Commenting on the recent M&A activity across the backup and business continuity sector, Murray said Veritas will continue to evaluate what's going on in the market and there will be "lots of other mergers and acquisitions and bits and pieces" that go on all the time in the industry "because that's just the way it is".

Speaking on Murray’s appointment, Veritas APAC vice president and managing director Andy Ng said, “Pete brings a wealth of experience to Veritas, from his proven track record of building strong teams to utilising the power of channel and reseller ecosystem to deliver results.”

“With his well-rounded expertise in cultivating both extensive customer and partner networks, we have no doubt Pete will be able to further propel Veritas into its next stage of growth in the ANZ region.”

Murray last worked at Pure Storage as APJ director of strategic channels, a role he held since 2019. Prior to that, he was at Dimension Data for more than 13 years, holding the role of NSW and ACT regional director from 2016 to 2019. Other stints include Telstra, Touchbase Australia and Avaya.

In a prepared statement, Murray said, “In the new hybrid working world, organisations can feel like there is more complexity than ever to mitigating the ever-evolving ransomware and compliance risks.”

“I look forward to leading the ANZ team to empower businesses to solve their data management challenges, especially at this critical time where enterprise customers more so than ever, need greater capability to protect the integrity of data across multiple mediums.”

Looking ahead, Murray told CRN he will spearhead Veritas' growth through its partners and customers by understanding and taking more advantage of the company's solutions, but also make Veritas a great place to work.

"I want to make the culture shine as an incredible culture in the industry so that talent is attracted to work for Veritas as we go on our growth agenda over the the years to come," he said.

"Given my involvement in charities in particular and my desire to give back to the community because the IT industry takes a lot as a big industry in its own right."

Murray founded the Jack Edge Connected Classroom Foundation in 2017, a venture that provides secure video connectivity from home to classroom for children who are terminally or seriously ill.