Online accounting vendor Xero has made a new appointment to drive growth in the United States.

Jamie Sutherland, a four-year veteran of Xero rival Sage Software, is taking on the role of president of US operations, operating from a San Francisco office along with CTO Craig Walker and his wife, Xero community manager Catherine Walker.

In a blog post announcing his appointment, Sutherland says he ‘moved on from the cloud vs. desktop debate a long time ago'.

"There was still some debate at Sage about the cloud which largely revolved around hosting desktop solutions,” Sutherland says.

"The internet has the ability to change every single industry on this planet so why wouldn't accounting be the same?”

Check out Sutherland's LinkedIn page here.