2015 Reseller News ICT Industry Awards Finalists: Meet the vendors…

The rise of virtualisation, the explosion of data creation and the opportunities cloud services offer are bringing to business has propelled industry experts Acronis into the technological limelight. With over five million worldwide customers, across 145 countries, Acronis’ regional roots stem from its vast portfolio of backup and disaster recovery programs, helping organisations securely migrate, protect and recover critical data wherever it resides. As General Manager of Australia and New Zealand, Lincoln Goldsmith leads a vendor setting the standard for New Generation Data Protection through its backup, disaster recovery, and secure access solutions.
In securing the world's most demanding and complex networks from DDoS attacks and advanced threats, Arbor Networks has forged a solid reputation within the ICT industry. Headed by Country Manager Nick Race in Australia and New Zealand, the security vendor provides customers with a micro view of their own network, through its wide-ranging suite of products, combined with a macro view of global Internet traffic and emerging threats, through its ATLAS threat intelligence infrastructure.
Operating as a global tech giant with a strong local presence, Cisco makes the list following a stellar year within the hardware and networking space, as the company continues to capitalise on connecting the seemingly unconnected, amidst a changing digital world. Kiwi industry veteran Geoff Lawrie heads up operations in New Zealand, as the company continues to dramatically reinvent itself as the Internet of Everything - as Cisco calls it - takes businesses by storm.
Enghouse Interactive (Zeacom) develops and sells a wide range of customer contact solutions to organisations, drawing on its expanding network of partners across New Zealand. As Managing Director of the Asia Pacific region, Dean Hodgson oversees a team that delivers a comprehensive portfolio of interaction management applications, spanning contact centre, attendant console, IVR, and call recording/voice analytic solutions that support any telephony environment, on premise or in the cloud.
With the broadest technology portfolio spanning printing, personal systems, software, services and IT infrastructure, HP delivers solutions for customers' most complex challenges in every region of the world. In New Zealand, the organisation draws on its strong local pedigree to excel across a variety of sectors, including business, government and society. HP will officially split into two companies in November, with industry stalwarts Keith Watson heading the new Enterprise division and Grant Hopkins taking charge of the Printing and Personal Systems division in New Zealand.
At Juniper Networks, the network is the single greatest vehicle for knowledge, understanding, and human advancement that the world has ever known. Now more than ever, the world relies on high-performance networks. And now more than ever, the world needs network innovation to unleash its full potential. As Country Manager of New Zealand, Ken Lord runs the Kiwi ship, providing a network that delivers mission-critical transactions, applications, and services.
Widely-regarded as one of the leading platform and productivity companies for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, Microsoft’s mission is simple; to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more. To do that in New Zealand, the tech giant works closely with its nationwide network of Kiwi partners, as it continues to make strong local strides across cloud, software and hardware under the guidance of Barrie Sheers, the new man at the helm locally.
A global market leader in enterprise and mobile communications powering more than two billion business connections and two billion mobile subscribers every day, Mitel helps businesses and mobile carriers connect, collaborate and provide innovative services to their customers. In New Zealand, General Manager James Bruty carries on the job - overseeing a local team that provides a bridge between enterprise and mobile customers.
Citing thousands of organisations worldwide as satisfied customers, MuleSoft connects the world’s applications, data and devices. Headed locally by regional VP Jonathan Stern, MuleSoft connects anything through the company’s flagship offering Anypoint Platform, a complete integration platform for SaaS, SOA and APIs.
As a leading provider of simplified IP phone systems and unified communications solutions, ShoreTel solutions are designed to eliminate complexity and improve productivity. Labelled a specialists in providing innovative unified communications offerings across a range of industries, New Zealand Partner Business Manager Phil Morgan helps Kiwi organisations communicate and collaborate no matter the time, place or device, with minimal demand on IT resources.
Since starting out producing antivirus and encryption products nearly 30 years ago, today, Sophos products help secure the networks used by 100 million people in 150 countries and 100,000 businesses, including Pixar, Under Armour, Northrop Grumman, Xerox, Ford, Avis, and Toshiba. As IT networks grow in complexity, at a local level Ashley Wearne - General Manager of Australia and New Zealand - ensures Sophos remains focused on keeping IT security simple and reliable.
Veeam recognises the new challenges companies across the globe face in enabling the Always-On Business, a business that must operate 24/7/365. Founded in 2006, Veeam currently has 33,000 ProPartners and more than 157,000 customers worldwide - and is driven locally by Don Williams, VP of Australia and New Zealand.
Digital business transformation is creating new opportunities and risks in every industry. VMware helps IT become Brave New IT by unifying private, managed and public clouds into one hybrid cloud. In New Zealand, Partner Business Manager Grant Finer helps Kiwi customers accelerate innovation, engage customers with new mobile-cloud applications, and govern risk.
Amidst a global expansion, Lenovo now stands as a US$34 billion personal technology company and the world's largest PC vendor. As Head of New Zealand Distribution and Channel, Nathan Knight is leading the Kiwi charge, forging deeper roots in major markets as the company invests in sales and distribution, R&D and other high-value functions. In short, the aim at Lenovo is to build a new kind of company - a "global-local" company.