APC promotes Kirker as A/NZ Pacific sales director

APC's Andrew Kirker

APC has hired Andrew Kirker as its new Pacific sales director for A/NZ.

Prior to taking up the newly created role, Kirker was the country manager for APC in New Zealand and South Pacific. He has clocked up 15 years experience in the IT industry, with 10 years spent at [[xref:APC.

The vendor also hired Neil McKinnon as its NSW branch manager and he has spent the past five years with APC.

Simon Smith will be stepping in as the regional manager for New Zealand and South Pacific.

The vendor is still searching for a local CEO, to replace the recently departed, Gordon Makryllos.

Through this new structure, Kirker said, it would help accelerate partners into the solutions selling arena.

“We need to allow our partners to have access to solutions and we see a way to up- skill our channel, providing more on the job training,” Kirker said. “We want our best partners working with our best solution staff to have an end to end infrastructure and IT offer.”

Kirker also touched on growth areas in the market such as the traditional datacentre space, co-location facilities, energy efficiency and cloud computing.

“We’re seeing a lot of organisations deploying private clouds and we’ve been in a lot of the underpinnings of those private clouds,” he said. “Cloud computing will change the how the market is structured and organised around the datacentre.”

Visiting Asia Pacific and Japan President, Philippe Arsonneau, said it was creating a uniform way of doing business in Australia, which is a very strategic market for the vendor.

“We’re committed and strong in the region and we want to develop it,” Arsonneau said. “In the Pacific regions, A/NZ is very key area of investment for us. It’s a mature market in terms of the datacentre, competency and people in this region.”

Arsonneau highlighted partners played an important role in Schneider Electric’s and APC’s business, said it would be looking to integrate more solutions from across the two units covering IT, building and the electrical space.

“There’s more complexity in technology and customers want to have this integration made by the manufacturer,” he said. “We have great respect for our partners and channel. They have been, and will continue to be, key for us in the future.”

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