VMware exec appointed first-ever Nimble Australia MD

Flash storage vendor Nimble Storage has hired former VMware director Bede Hackney to head up its Australian operations.

This is Nimble’s first Australian managing director, with vice president of Asia Pacific and Japan Peter O’Connor running the local operation until now.

“We’ve added a lot of staff to help the Australian business, but we needed someone dedicated to help grow it even further,” said O’Connor. “Most of the staff had to report to the US executive, but now we’ve consolidated it into one local position.”

Hackney was director of product sales at VMware for over a year prior to joining Nimble. He also held various roles at Citrix for over nine years, ending up as senior director of product sales.

“I came across the position, and I’d been aware of Nimble for a while from their favourable reviews for handling enterprise workloads,” said Hackney. “So it was a great opportunity to join at the next stage of their dramatic growth.”

Nimble today also announced updated features to its adaptive flash platform for enterprises. These include software-based encryption, Microsoft ODX and SCVMM support and audit log tracking, which are available as free updates.

“Since we started in 2012, take-up of flash has grown tremendously, and there’s been a lot of interest in the channel community,” said O’Connor.

Last August, Nimble brought on Nextgen as its sole distributor, and now has around 70 reseller partners in Australia and New Zealand.

“We’ve always had enterprise customers, but it wasn’t our key focus until last year. We’ve also seen growing interest from our systems integrator partners recently, so we’ll be working more closely with them,” O'Connor said.