Intelligent Tech Channels Issue 12 | Page 54

INDUSTRY APPOINTMENTS Maya Zakhour joins NetApp as Head of MEA Distribution and Alliances Maya Zakhour has joined NetApp as Head of Distribution and Alliances, Middle East and Africa. She will be responsible for managing the distribution landscape in Middle East and Africa as well as growing NetApp’s channel spread. She will be leading the regional NetApp team’s efforts in applying best practices to stabilise the channel community and focus on developing small and medium business. She will also be responsible for building the velocity business in the region. Maya moves to NetApp from Fortinet where she was Channel Director of Middle East since 2014. At Fortinet, Maya was responsible for implementing and executing the channel strategy across the Middle East region. She was fully dedicated to developing and growing the Fortinet business, working jointly with the team and with Fortinet’s top strategic partners towards mutually driven and successful business. Maya also had previous regional stints at Dimension Data and Microsoft (source: LinkedIn). Riverbed promotes Elie Dib to Regional Vice President METNA Riverbed Technology announced the promotion of Elie Dib to the position of Regional Vice President for Middle East, Turkey and North Africa. This elevated status is recognition of his leadership of the regional sales team which has resulted in sustained growth and deeper penetration into key industry verticals, including Wael Mustafa elevated to Commvault Area Vice President MESAT Commvault, a global vendor in enterprise data protection and information management, is consolidating its position within the Middle East, South Africa and Turkey with the promotion of Wael Mustafa to the position of Area Vice President for MESAT. As Area Vice President for the region, Mustafa will be focused on delivering market leading solutions to regional organisations to transform their data into powerful strategic assets. The appointment indicates Commvault’s continual expansion in the Middle East, with Mustafa committed to fostering new and existing customer relationships still further; focused on Commvault technical innovations to establish new partnerships, and expanding 54 the businesses focus on vendor agnostic, hyperscale, cloud and as-a-service data management offerings. Prior to joining Commvault in 2015 as MESAT Territory and Channel Sales Director, Mustafa spent more than 15 years serving in various roles at Zain and EMC where he developed a passion for sales and an intimate knowledge of backup and data management systems. “We have made growing our business in emerging markets such as MESAT a priority over the past few years, and the results have been substantial,” said Christian Lang, Vice-President Commvault EMEA. “Mustafa’s enterprise IT industry experience and the commitment to sales and channels excellence he demonstrated in his previous government, defence, finance, oil and gas and, most recently, the retail sector. Dib will continue to report directly to Andy Elder, Senior Vice President, EMEA at Riverbed, who said, “Through his tenure at Riverbed, Elie has held senior management roles, including responsibility for the channel and subsequently our entire operations in the region. He has demonstrated great leadership abilities by implementing initiatives that have streamlined our business processes, strengthened our relationships with the channel community, and incentivised the regional team to consistently hit their targets.” Dib, who previously held the position of Regional Managing Director, METNA, was responsible for deepening relationships with key channel partners as well as leading the team to drive much closer engagement with customers in the region. As Regional Vice President, he intends to continue to focus on the sales, channel, technical sales teams, and has a clearly defined strategy to position Riverbed as the fundamental provider of visibility for network, application and end-user experience monitoring. role, make him perfectly suited to expand our presence within the region. He will help further strengthen our position as the company Middle Eastern organisations partner with to not only backup their data, but transform that data into a valuable strategic asset.”  Issue 12 INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS