Category: Moving People

Driscoll exits Nuvias after sale

Lee Driscoll has said he is leaving Nuvias following its sale to private equity-backed peer Infinigate.

He joined Nuvias in 2015 via its acquisition of Zycko, shortly after Rigby Private Equity founded Nuvias.

His 30-year career in the channel also includes stints at the Rigbys’ previous distribution ventures, including ETC and SDG.

Nuvias announced the sale of most of its business to Switzerland-based peer Infinigate in July.

Driscoll feels that it is the right time to take a break from the industry.

End of Story at Civica

Public sector software supplier Civica has announced that its CEO Wayne Story will formally retire on 31 December.

He will be succeeded by Lee Perkins who will take become the new group CEO.

Civica founder and group chair, Simon Downing said that during his tenure, Story expanded Civica’s global reach and increased software product capability while retaining the company’s culture and values.

“His leadership in successfully navigating us all through an unprecedented global pandemic – providing calm and clear direction and a reassuring ‘voice’ in uncertain times has left the business in such a strong position.”

Emma de Sousa exits Insight

Insight’s EMEA president, Emma de Sousa has announced she will be leaving the building for the last time on 31 December.

After 20 years working for the reseller giant she is leaving to make way for Adrian Gregory, an Atos executive who has previously run its Northern European and APAC business.

De Sousa moved into the EMEA president role just under three years ago, having previously led the UK business.

She seems to have left leaving a statement which was possibly written by a PR AI, as it is difficult to imagine a human saying it.

“It was a very difficult decision to make, but it has been a privilege to be part of this wonderful organisation that continually strives for greatness and lives by its core values of hunger, heart and harmony”, de Sousa apparently said.

Insight CEO Joyce Mullen said: “We have enormous respect for the decision that Emma has made, and we fully support her.

“We thank her for her phenomenal leadership and many years of success leading the UK and our EMEA business. Widely respected both with the industry and Insight, I’d also like to pay tribute to Emma’s enduring commitment to building a high performance, highly inclusive culture at Insight. We have taken this opportunity to look carefully at the market and have found a terrific successor in Adrian.”

 

 

Lomas exits Ingram Micro

Ingram Micro’s sales director Gary Lomas, is exiting the business and joining global integrator Onnec.

Lomas started at the distributor in 2020 and spent seven years at value-added reseller Logicalis in various sales director roles before joining the Ingram Micro company.

“I would like to thank Ingram Micro, Comms-care, Matthew Sanderson and Simon Day for giving me a chance to work for such a fantastic company for the last 2.5 years, which is full of so many talented people.”

Kevin Sparks, chief growth officer at Onnec, added: “We are delighted to welcome Gary to the team, with many years of experience within the IT industry this will be invaluable in what promises to be an exciting year for our company as we continue to help our customers with large scale build and IT transformation projects across the globe.”

Daisy calls in Knight

Daisy Corporate Services has appointed a new managing director of operational resiliency and cyber security.

Iulia Knight, who has more than 10 years of experience in the enterprise operational resilience and critical event management software solutions space, will be responsible for further developing Daisy’s combined proposition and go-to-market strategy.

She comes from Cutover where she had a similar role. Before that she spend nine years at OneSolve, which included five years managing the company’s international division.

Aerospike appoint James EMEA Vice President.

Aerospike has appointed Martin James as EMEA Vice President. He is responsible for driving regional growth.

James brings 25 years of database sector expertise to Aerospike. He joined the company from Percona, where he trebled the business in EMEA and APAC. Prior to Percona, he was regional Vice President for Northern Europe at DataStax, managing enterprise sales to achieve double-digit growth. For Aerospike, James will develop regional sales teams that meet the exacting SLAs of today’s data-driven enterprise.

His job is to push the Aerospike Real-time Data Platform to businesses seeking to build large-scale real-time applications.

Swales defects to Lenovo

VMware channel leader Bill Swales has defected to Lenovo.

Swales joined VMware in 2018 as VP of global commercial sales before moving to the role of VP and channel chief of its Americas partner organisation.

According to a LinkedIn post he is leaving in mid-October. Swales did not say what his role would be but since his farewell post said “our paths will absolutely cross again”, he probably will be talking to partners.

HPE has new UK managing director

HPE has appointed a new UK managing director.

Matt Harris will run the end-to-end management of HPE’s UK business, people, and operations from Marc Waters.

Waters has been running the outfit since 2016 and is moving to the senior vice president for the UK, Ireland, Middle East, Africa and High Performance Computing in EMEA chair.

Vertiv appoints Lim for HR role

Vertiv has named Cheryl Lim the company’s new Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO).

Lim will report directly to CEO Rob Johnson and run the outfit’s HR.

She has been working for more than two decades leading human resources teams, supporting organisational changes, and supplying data-driven stuff  for global HR operations in the manufacturing space.

Before joining Vertiv, Lim  held HR positions at Honeywell and was most recently the vice president of Human Resources at ITT.

Cohesity headhunts VMware’s former chief operating officer

VMware’s former chief operating officer Sanjay Poonen has been headhunted by Cohesity as its new CEO and President.

Sanjay Poonen oversaw sales, marketing, services, and alliances in his most recent role at VMware, helping to double revenues from approximately $6 billion to $12 billion.

Poonen said that Cohesity sat at the intersection of three of the highest priority business issues today – cyber security, cloud, and data management.

Westcon-Comstor reshuffles management

Westcon-Comstor is shuffling its senior UK management team with the disties’ existing UK boss Anthony Byford is moving into a role as vice-president in a newly formed clouded collaboration business division.

This leaves a UK and Ireland managing director vacancy that is being filled by John Nolan.

He said: “I’ve witnessed major shifts in technology adoption and the impacts on the channel during my 17-year tenure at Westcon-Comstor. The single constant throughout this time has been the difference an experienced distributor like Westcon can make when helping partners navigate those market shifts while maintaining high service levels.

Ensono makes Malloy in charge of Europe

Ensono, a technology adviser and managed service provider, announced that Howard Malloy has been appointed Senior Vice President (SVP) and Managing Director (MD), Europe.

Malloy most recently served as the Global Vice President of Client Success and prior to that, he served as Managing Director for India.

Ensono said that Malloy’s appointment is part of Ensono’s long-term commitment to invest in the future of the UK and wider European market.

“The company has a long history of investing in cutting edge UK technology firms, acquiring IT services provider Attenda in 2016, Microsoft Azure experts, Inframon in 2017 and cloud-native consultancy Amido last year. These strategic acquisitions have helped Ensono provide clients a truly end-to-end transformational service, becoming their trusted ally for better business outcomes ,” the company said.

Hess walks away from Telefónica Tech CEO role

Telefónica Tech UK&I CEO Martin Hess has stepped down from the role and will be doing something different in the company.

Hess will be replaced by the firm’s vice president of sales and marketing Mark Gorton while he focuses on longer-term strategic growth, both in the UK&I and worldwide, Telefónica Tech said.

Gorton played an “instrumental role” in the growth of Cancom UK&I, which was sold to Telefónica Tech in July 2021, the Microsoft partner added, and also in the acquisition of Incremental Group in March this year.

“I am incredibly proud of the journey our business has been on and where we have got to in a relatively short space of time and I am confident that Mark and Dominic will continue this same upward curve”, Hess said.

Zoom appoints Todd Surdey Head of Global Channel & Business Development

Zoom announced that Todd Surdey has joined Zoom as its Head of Global Channel & Business Development.

Surdey joins Zoom with an extensive enterprise and channel background having served in leadership roles at Google, Palo Alto Networks, SAP, Salesforce, and VMware, among others.

He brings with him an intimate knowledge of running enterprise businesses, as well as a long history with and passion for the channel, all of which will be critical as Zoom continues to scale the channel and partner business.

Softcat top cat will quit next year

Softcat boss Graeme Watt will step down as CEO next year and will be replaced by the company’s CFO Graham Charlton.

Watt will become Softcat’s non-executive chair, replacing Martin Hellawell who will step down from his position and from Softcat’s board.

Watt began his tenure as Softcat’s CEO in April 2018 after former CEO Hellawell moved to a chairman position. Under Watt’s leadership, Softcat has almost doubled its revenues – from £1.08 billion for the year ending 31 July 2018 to £1.94bn (gross invoiced income) in its FY2021.