New A/NZ chief Rianne Van Veldhuizen
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has appointed Rianne Van Veldhuizen as its new managing director for Australia and New Zealand, replacing Adam Beavis, who spent more than a year and a half in the role.
Beavis has moved to a new post as the company's Asia Pacific and Japan managing director of ISV and digital-native businesses.
Van Veldhuizen joined AWS in January as its Asia Pacific and Japan head of small-to-medium-sized businesses and previously spent 15 years at IBM, most recently as its Asia Pacific chief digital officer and vice president digital sales and commercial.
Van Veldhuizen will lead AWS’s local commercial sales organisation and continue to work alongside Iain Rouse, who was appointed director of public sector for AWS in A/NZ in February 2019.
Her appointment comes as AWS makes a number of shuffles within its global channel team including Ashish Dhawan’s appointment to lead worldwide partner sales for enterprise workloads – relocating from Singapore to the US as part of the move.
Prior to his promotion, Dhawan was managing director of enterprise, mid-market and global accounts for South Asia, with Vaishali Kasturae named as his successor.
Former global partner leader of Microsoft workloads on AWS, Keith Groom will now report to Dhawan as the new head of partner strategy.
The reshuffle comes as former AWS CEO Andy Jassy prepares to take over from Jeff Bezos as Amazon boss, with Tableau CEO Adam Selipsky stepping in as his replacement.
Recently, AWS expressed its concerns with the Australian government's Critical Infrastructure Bill, as it fronted up to the Parliamentary committee reviewing the proposed legislation.
Although AWS said it “welcomes” the bill’s proposed reforms, the US company issued concerns regarding part 3A of the bill, which give the government powers to gather information, issue directions, or act autonomously to directly intervene in an asset.
“This package of independently exercisable and un-reviewable powers is too broad, is inconsistent with a healthy separation of powers, and should be reconsidered,” AWS head of Public Policy in Australia and New Zealand Roger Somerville said in an opening statement prepared for AWS' appearance at the committee's public hearing in Canberra on 8 July.
