A flurry of top regional vendor leaders have changed roles this summer in a game of exec musical chairs involving Microsoft, Cisco, IBM and Nutanix.
IBM this week moved to appoint Andrew Gill as its new Vice President for Ecosystem for UK & Ireland.
The appointment comes after Gill’s predecessor, IBM veteran Alison Say, moved to Microsoft to take up a role as Senior Director, GSI and Advisory Partners.
Gill was previously Channel Director for Western Europe at Nutanix, which this week announced three new senior EMEA hires, including Sven Schoenaerts as its new Senior Director, Channel Sales EMEA (it told us it is still hiring for Gill’s direct replacement).
Not to be outdone, Cisco this week unveiled a new UK&I CEO in the form of Sarah Walker.
Walker, who previously led Cisco’s UK&I enterprise business, succeeds David Meads as he transitions to lead the company’s operations in the Middle East and Africa.
What they said
Both IBM and Cisco went heavy on AI in their respective press releases about their new leaders.
“IBM is incredibly well-positioned to capture the surging enterprise demand for hybrid cloud and AI technologies in the UK & Ireland market,” Gill – who spent more than 26 years at IBM prior to his stint Nutanix – said in a canned comment.
“The way we utilise and build for AI now, will shape the next decade and I truly believe that no one is better placed than Cisco to ensure that we do so securely and responsibly,” Walker stated in Cisco’s press release.
Schoenaerts, who joined Nutanix as its NEEUR Channel Sales Director in 2022, zoned in on the buzzwords of hybrid and multicloud, meanwhile.
“Partners have been a cornerstone of the success of Nutanix, and will play an even more important role in helping customers achieve the benefits of hybrid and multicloud architectures,” a statement attributed to Schoenaerts read.
