Personnel notifications October 2019


Gerald Pfeifer joins the openSuse board

Gerald Pfeifer has been appointed as the new chairman of the openSuse board. Pfeifer, a long-time open source expert and Suse CTO in EMEA, will take on this role in parallel to his CTO role.
With the help of Gerald Pfeifer, the openSuse Board will continue to provide input, guidance and support to the openSuse project, which develops leading infrastructure and container software, including various Linux operating systems, and tools.
As Suse CTO in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, he is responsible for strategic dialog with customers, partners and open source communities worldwide. Previously, he was responsible for the design and further development of Suse's extensive enterprise open source portfolio.
"I am excited and honored to serve the openSuse project as chair in the future"
says Gerald Pfeifer.
"The openSuse community has contributed to extraordinary Linux distributions. I look forward to more developments and tools from the openSuse community, in Linux and beyond. openSuse is at the forefront of a historic shift in which open source software is finding itself as a critical factor in the strategy of successful companies. This is an exciting time for the openSuse community and for open source itself."
Suse is committed to the openSuse development model, as a sponsor and supporter of the project. This partnership has resulted in an intensive collaboration.
Swen Rehders becomes CEO of NTT Data EMEA

Swen Rehders, CEO of NTT Data Germany, has been appointed Acting CEO of NTT Data EMEA. In addition to his new role, Swen Rehders will remain CEO of NTT Data Germany.
He succeeds Benito Vázquez, who has led the company's operations as CEO of NTT Data EMEA since April 2018. Toshi Fujiwara, Senior Executive Vice President Americas and Europe:
"We thank Benito Vázquez for his great commitment and valuable contribution to the growth of NTT Data EMEA. He is a very accomplished leader and working closely together we were able to achieve significant improvements.
By handing over to Swen Rehders, one of the most experienced leaders in our organization, we are ensuring a smooth transition for NTT Data EMEA."
Swen Rehders' task is to drive growth in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He has more than 30 years of experience in the IT industry and has held various management positions.
After studying business informatics, he began his career in 1985 as a sales manager in the IT industry at IBM. He later spent eight years as Managing Director of EDS (now HP Enterprise) and was a member of the Executive Committee at Atos.
In his new position as Acting CEO EMEA, he is to drive NTT Data's growth in the DACH region. The company, headquartered in Tokyo, offers its customers business and IT solutions. In Germany, the company is one of the major IT systems houses.
Blackline appoints new Vice President DACH

Blackline announced the appointment of Ralph Weiss as Vice President DACH. The newly created role confirms Blackline's strategy to grow its DACH business and deepen relationships with customers and partners in the region.
Ralph Weiss joins Blackline from Winshuttle, a leading platform provider for SAP-based data management. He brings more than twenty years of experience and extensive knowledge of the regional market to the Blackline team.
Previously, he spent more than a decade as enterprise solutions sales manager at Adobe, where he helped build a joint go-to-market strategy with SAP. Blackline's cloud-based solutions help companies optimize financial close by replacing manual accounting processes with a controlled and end-to-end solution. Commenting on his appointment, Ralph Weiss said:
"Blackline's credibility combined with my knowledge of the existing challenges in finance and accounting departments make this an interesting role for me. I look forward to driving the transformation of finance."
Uwe Jürgens new at Syntax

Uwe Jürgens is the new Vice President Sales and member of the European management team at IT service provider Syntax. The 57-year-old business graduate comes from analytics software manufacturer SAS, where he has held various management positions in sales for almost 19 years - most recently as Enterprise Sales Director and member of the Management Board for Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Before joining SAS, Jürgens worked for ten years in management consulting, including for KPMG Unternehmensberatung. Uwe Jürgens will be responsible for all sales activities in Europe at Syntax. He will report to European CEO Ralf Sürken.
In Uwe Jürgens, the company has been able to recruit an experienced sales professional with a high level of leadership competence, who has an enormous amount of experience in leading and managing B2B sales organizations and who can act at eye level with representatives from upper medium-sized companies and large corporations.
His central tasks include the further expansion of the Syntax Cloud business. In addition, the focus is on the growth of the already strong portfolio topics such as S/4 Hana and Industrial IoT.
Marcell Vollmer joins Celonis as CIO

Celonis brings on board Marcell Vollmer as chief innovation officer. Vollmer will use his knowledge to support Celonis' rapid expansion and have a focus on customer and partner relationships.
"As a champion of process mining and a key influencer, Marcell Vollmer will be instrumental in advancing the market. With process mining, companies become superfluid and exceptional customer experiences move to the center of entrepreneurial action."
says Alexander Rinke, co-CEO at Celonis.
Just like many Celonis customers, Vollmer was responsible for enterprise processes himself for a long time. Vollmer has 14 years of experience at SAP. Most recently, as Chief Digital Officer of SAP Ariba & SAP Fieldglass, he developed strategies to help global leaders simplify procurement and supply chain operations.
In his previous position as Chief Procurement Officer at SAP, he led over 200 employees responsible for billions of dollars in global spend. Prior to that, he held various roles in strategic projects and finance at SAP, including establishing several shared services centers.
Matthias Till joins the Patentpool Group team as Chief Financial Officer. Already since May, the financial expert has been taking care of the Prisma Analytics project, among others. In addition, Till is involved in the establishment and design of his own Patentpool Fund.
Richard Nagorny is the new Chief Financial Officer of WMD Group. He complements the trio of managing directors. The standardization and optimization of commercial processes as well as strategy development and implementation are among his competencies, which he will bring to the WMD Group.
Christian Wilimzig is appointed Managing Director of Control.IT. Wilimzig is responsible for the further expansion of the standards of the bison.box software in the strongly growing residential sector and accompanies the implementation and migration of new and existing customers in this area.
Avast appoints Vita Santrucek as general manager of Avast Business. His focus is on expanding Avast's portfolio through new development, product management and process optimization. He has 20 years of experience in companies such as Oracle and Sun Microsystems.
Wolfgang Niedziella, Managing Director of the VDE Group, is responsible for the new Digital Security Competence Center in the VDE. In his position, the electrical engineer brings together the core competencies distributed throughout the VDE Group to form a cross-organizational business area.
As Head of the Shared Service Center Marketing, Jörg Wassink is responsible for Valantic's communication activities. In this position, the communications manager will focus primarily on brand management and digital development.