NetApp has recently announced that Alex Wallner, Area Vice President for Central Europe and Russia, will now be responsible for NetApp’s business operations in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa. The region was previously managed by Thomas Ehrlich, Vice President for NetApp’s partner ecosystem in EMEA.
“We are making these shifts for two reasons,” explains Manfred Reitner, Senior Vice President and General Manager, EMEA. “One pillar of our strategy is expanding our offerings and success into leading global enterprises. As Vice President Global Accounts and Partner Ecosystem EMEA, Thomas Ehrlich will take on the additional role managing our global customer accounts based in EMEA, and for capacity reasons transition his regional responsibility to Alex Wallner, who has successfully managed Central Europe, Russia and CIS”.
One of the first steps of Wallner is to enhance customer and partner experience in the region in order to be closer to local market requirements. NetApp will structure its African and Middle East business from previously two to three regions:
- East & West Africa, Angola, South Africa and Southern African Development Community (SADC)
- The Middle East
- North Africa (MENA).
The following sales leaders will be responsible for the three regions:
- Joël Ryser for East & West Africa
- Fadi Kanafani will continue to be responsible for MENA
- The sales leader for South Africa, SADC and Angola will soon be appointed.
Their responsibilities include development and execution of sales and channel strategies, expanding the NetApp customer base in their respective regions and enhancing the partner and alliances ecosystem. All three report into Senior Director Konstantin Ebert, who continues to manage the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa, but has also taken on additional responsibility for Russia and CIS in Wallner’s team.
“Africa and the Middle East continue to be focus areas for NetApp and we are confident that our solutions offer great value to both our customers and partners. We will remain 100 percent indirect and rely on our channel network to drive distribution and integration as well as high-value opportunities such as consulting and professional services,” says Ebert.
The new structure demonstrates NetApp’s commitment to its growth strategy and affirms that NetApp will continue to develop and prosper in these markets, extracting maximum impact from the expected high domestic growth. To answer local customers’ challenges, the company will look to the strength of its channel and technology alliances as well as the innovation leadership as demonstrated by the depth of its portfolio and best-of-breed quality solutions. These include the branded storage operating system ‘clustered Data ONTAP’, the high-performance E-Series and the most comprehensive enterprise flash storage offering in the business.
