Backup, recovery and data protection company Veeam has hired Klasie Holtzhausen as its new channel sales director for Australia and New Zealand.

The company announced the appointment following predecessor Janet Docherty's recent departure. As part of his new role, Holtzhausen will manage Veeam's regional channel teams and will engage with its 2,500 partners and distributors to continue its work in delivering data protection, hybrid cloud and SaaS solutions.

Based in Sydney, Holtzhausen will focus on growing Veeam's Tier 1 and 2 partners across the ANZ region as part of the company's ‘reformed' channel strategy. This will be achieved by helping partners build their service offerings, which will help customers better manage their data.

Veeam vice president for ANZ Gary Mitchell, who Holtzhausen will report to, says he's confident the appointment will further Veeam's growth of its partner business.

“Klasie's proven success in building multiple routes to market with partners, as well as delivering outstanding sales practices and results, is exceptional,” says Mitchell.

“Veeam drives 100% of its sales through the channel, and we are fully committed to enabling our partners to increase and diversify their value-propositions for customers by offering modern data protection solutions across cloud, virtual, SaaS, Kubernetes and physical environments delivered either as a service or on-premises.

“Veeam prides itself in the way it collaborates with partners and with Klasie's unparalleled experience in boosting channel growth, we're looking forward to having him at the reigns to continue the successful growth of our ANZ partners in helping our joint customers overcome challenges of the digital transformation era.

Holtzhausen has over 25 years' sales and channel leadership experience in the IT industry and was previously Regional Director, Pacific at Forcepoint. He has also held senior roles at Symantec, IBM, Dell Software and CA Technologies.

Holtzhausen says, “Veeam has had an incredible track record in the past 18 months with the success of v11, completing support for all three major public cloud providers and consistent double-digit revenue growth.

“I'm excited to be joining a 100% channel company that ensures its partners are always at the core of every decision Veeam makes.

“This puts Veeam in a very strong position to focus on supporting our partners' innovation and cloud value-propositions, as well as providing the tools and skills required to support Digital Transformation in the most simple, flexible and reliable way.

Holtzhausen says that with the risks associated with cloud adoption and emerging technologies today, it's more imperative than ever to help partners mitigate this risk.

“Helping partners manage customer risk on their transformation journey is the number one goal,” says Holtzhausen.

“I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Veeam's network of partners and take them on the journey with Veeam to achieving growth and success across ANZ and beyond.