Based in London, Andy Hill has been VP EMEA Sales at Komprise since May 2018. He brings over 20 years of experience in leading EMEA sales, channels and business development.
Most recently, Andy was VP Sales, EMEA for Nexsan where he was responsible for planning, strategy and execution of its EMEA sales, partner and channel strategies.
Prior to Nexsan, Andy held senior management positions at a variety of storage and data management companies including Pivot3, Sungard and Veritas.
Intelligent Tech Channels spoke to him about Komprise’s channel operations and his own managerial style.
What does your position entail? As VP EMEA Sales at Komprise, I lead all sales and channel activities in EMEA.
Can you explain how your company works with channel partners?
Komprise is 100% channel based, so all our business flows through channel partners. Channels are strategic to our business and we have a strong channel programme with incentives and training for our partners.
What is your management philosophy?
We believe in focus and quality. I like to invest in A+ players and empower them to play their parts. As an example, our channel strategy is to focus on the right channel partners and invest in them to succeed – it’s all about quality not quantity.
Do you work differently with channel partners in the Middle East compared to Africa? Each region is different in certain ways – but overall our strategy in both the Middle East and Africa is to work with some key channel partners who understand the local market and are good at bringing differentiated emerging technologies into the region.
How do your partners deliver your solutions to end-users?
Komprise is a 100% software solution that runs in a virtual environment. Most of our partners sell Komprise as part of an overall data management solution that also includes secondary storage and Flash.
How do you ensure channel partners flourish in a highly competitive market?
Channel partners need to differentiate their offerings and add value for customers rather than just selling off-the-shelf solutions – one way to do this is by bringing strong emerging technologies to the customer. For instance, a key challenge for businesses today is the explosive growth of unstructured data. Komprise channel partners help customers address this pain point by first giving the customer visibility into why and how their data is growing, helping them plan a modern storage and data protection strategy that cuts 70%+ costs while providing better outcomes, and then helping them implement this strategy.
What are the latest trends you see emerging across the channel?
As customers are grappling with the cloud, channel partners are trying to figure out their own cloud strategy and how they can be relevant in a hybrid cloud transformation.
Which regions do you see offering the most opportunities for your company?
Komprise is growing rapidly in both North America and EMEA. We expect our EMEA business to more than double this year as customers are grappling with the massive growth of data, coupled with new regulations like GDPR that create new data privacy and retention requirements, and the need to do more with less.
