Personnel announcements September 2018
Snow appoints President & Chief Operating Officer
Snow Software, a global provider of software asset management (SAM) and cloud spend management solutions and SAP licensing specialist, has appointed Vishal Rao as President & Chief Operating Officer (COO).
In this role, Rao is expected to focus on all go-to-market strategies and customer-facing functions. He will also continue to serve on Snow's Board of Directors.
Rao, who joined Snow's board of directors more than two years ago, has extensive operational experience building and growing field and sales operations at software companies in his more than twenty-year career.
He spent the better part of the last decade at Splunk and Cloudera, both of which experienced strong growth and success, and realized significant revenue milestones, including successful IPOs, during his tenure. For the past three and a half years, he has served as Cloudera's SVP of Field Operations, responsible for all customer-related functions, including five years at Splunk, most recently overseeing worldwide sales.
Axel Kling, CEO of Snow, said: "Having worked with Vishal for the past two years, I am excited to have someone with Vishal's industry experience and business acumen at the helm of Snow's go-to-market strategy and all customer-facing functions. Vishal has a proven track record and is the ideal person to take on this new role."
SAP Central and Eastern Europe under new management
Hartmut Thomsen will head the Central and Eastern Europe (MEE) region at SAP with immediate effect. He reports to Adaire Fox-Martin, member of the SAP Executive Board and responsible for SAP's business in the EMEA, MEE and Greater China regions.
Thomsen succeeds Stefan Höchbauer, who has been appointed President Digital Core, Global Customer Operations, and will report to SAP Executive Board member Jennifer Morgan. Höchbauer and his team are responsible for the global sales activities of SAP's Digital Core solutions.
This includes, among other things, SAP S/4 Hana Cloud. In his new role, Thomsen is responsible for all sales activities in SAP's MEE region. This includes Germany, Switzerland, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE, including Austria) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Thomsen has extensive experience in the Central and Eastern European markets. Most recently, he was Chief Operating Officer & Head of Cloud for the region. From 2012 to 2016, he was Managing Director of SAP Deutschland SE & Co. KG.
Thomsen has been with SAP since 2011 and was initially responsible for sales activities in Financial Services and Public Services as a member of the Executive Board in Germany.
"I would like to thank Stefan Höchbauer, under whose leadership the highly diverse Central and Eastern Europe region has consistently achieved outstanding results. I am confident that he will continue to write this success story thanks to his high level of commitment to the success of our customers and his expertise."
Fox-Martin said.
Stefan Heins becomes sole Circle Unlimited board member
Stefan Heins has been the sole member of Circle Unlimited's Management Board since July 1, 2018; he had already been a member of the Management Board since August 2017. Michael Grötsch, the founder and member of the Management Board, is retiring from the management of the software company at his own request.
Grötsch remains part of the management team as Team Leader Sales, Marketing and PR. Grötsch founded Circle Unlimited, a solution specialist for document, contract and license management in the SAP and Microsoft environment, in 2000.
"Michael Grötsch has been instrumental in the success of Circle Unlimited AG as a co-founder and long-time board member. I am pleased that he will remain part of the company and that we will continue to shape the future of Circle Unlimited together."
says Heins.
Heins, who holds a degree in business informatics, has been working for the company for more than ten years. After holding positions in software development and consulting, Heins took over responsibility as head of consulting in 2007.
As a project manager, he accompanied digitization projects at numerous national and international customers with cross-industry expertise.
New Director Business Transformation at Datavard
Gerd Hagmaier has been appointed the new Director of Business Transformation at software and consulting company Datavard. Hagmaier joins Datavard from SAP, where he was most recently responsible for building up the S/4 Hana theme as Enterprise Architect.
As a former consulting manager, he brings more than 20 years of experience from numerous large SLO migrations. At Datavard, Hagmaier wants to position Business Transformation Services in the areas of SAP S/4 Hana and BW/4.
"The number of companies that put the topic of moving to S/4 or BW/4 on their Prio 1 list is increasing sharply. In order to be able to decide on the right customer-specific path and the appropriate means of transport, facts are needed.
My goal is to provide these facts and make visible whether the road to S/4 will be a sprint or a marathon and which solutions, best practices and trends will enable an optimal time"
says Hagmaier.
The business information scientist and graduate in business administration studied at the Karlsruhe University of Cooperative Education. He most recently worked for twelve years in various management positions at SAP in Walldorf.
Generation change at WMD
The company founders and long-time managing directors Andreas Karge and Albrecht Lüdemann, hand over the management of the software manufacturer and SAP Silver Partner WMD to the long-time co-partners and managing directors Matthias Lemenkühler (l.) and Thomas Radestock (r.).
Together with Pinova Capital, WMD thus intends to lay the foundation for further expansion and a successful succession plan. In the future, Lemenkühler will be spokesman of the management board.
The effective date for Andreas Karge is September 30, 2018, while Albrecht Lüdemann will continue to support the company as Managing Director for Finance until at least March 31, 2019, and possibly - depending on the succession being secured - beyond that date.
All four will continue to retain the status of WMD shareholders, thus ensuring that they will be able to influence the course of the company in the future. Business office manager, he becomes in addition to his previous tasks in staff expansion.
Reto Hänggi takes over from Urs Rudin as branch and sales manager at the Pratteln location of the IT system house Bechtle Steffen Switzerland. Rudin served as sales manager for five years and also as branch manager for the past two years.
Primion, a provider of time management solutions with SAP-certified interfaces, has found a new CEO in Andreas Kupka. He was previously Executive Vice President at EVVA Sicherheitstechnologie, where he was responsible for marketing, sales and products.
Andreas von Lowtzow becomes Director Channel & Alliances at Matrix42. In this role, he is to further expand the IT service management provider's partner business. Von Lowtzow has been working in the IT sector for twenty years, among others at Dell EMC, NetApp, Bechtle and most recently at Hootsuite.
Friedrich Walker is the new Regional Channel Manager DACH at the US low-code platform provider OutSystems. Previously, he worked for Fujitsu, among others. OutSystems' low-code rapid application development platform is certified for S/4 and SAP NetWeaver.
BearingPoint has appointed 17 new partners in Europe. Among others, Christoph Steens, Giso Hutschenreiter, Reinhard Geigenfeind, Thorsten Vogel and Pompeo D'Ingiandi will support the management and technology consultancy as executives.
With Robert Kreillechner, Fujitsu Austria has appointed a new Head of Product Sales. He was previously Managing Director of MCL Austria, a B2B IT solutions provider and Platinum Partner of HP and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
