ARN Q2 2019

Q2 2019 | Vol. 24 No. 2

EMERGING LEADERS THE FUTURE OF TECH

Contents

Q2 2019

VOLUME 24_ISSUE 2

20

Transitioning to the new security frontiers This ARN Roundtable examined key market challenges around cloud migrations.

26

30 Under 30 Tech Awards ARN honoured 30 young talents in the Australian IT industry across technical,

4

sales, marketing, management, human resources and entrepreneur categories.

58

Emerging Leaders Forum 4

8

Young bloods taking the channel by storm

10

What happens when a generation of kids raised on technology doesn’t

forum, ARN reports on the young

seem particularly interested in

talent taking the channel by storm

working in the industry that not only

and asks why attracting it remains

spawns their gadgets but delivers

such a challenge.

the core of their lifestyles?

12

Spot the gaps and roll the dice

life lessons on work, fulfillment and

Sachin Verma of Oreta shares his

establishing a legacy in the IT industry.

lessons on going it alone, leadership and why sharing wealth always pays its dues.

14

How can partners trigger customer transformation?

This ARN Roundtable outlined the

8

value proposition through professional services and how partners in Australia

successful ARN Emerging Leaders

How to work your best life

ARN Connect outlined the end-user

Panel: ping pong, paradoxes & priorities

In the wake of this year’s highly

James Bergl of Datto shares his

How can the channel service new customer demands?

market potential for partners in Australia, assessing the customer

can capitalise.

12 Interviews 62

Delivering a managed services ComUnity

requirements in 2019 and how the

Building the right foundations for

channel can create new business

cloud migration.

through new alliances.

64

Expanding its footprint across Australia IntegrationWorks talks about a vendor agnostic environment.

arnnet.com.au Q2 2019

02 Publisher's Note

CELEBRATING OUR FUTURE LEADERS

PRESIDENT AND PUBLISHER susan searle susan_searle@idg.com.au

EDITORIAL head of news: samira sarraf

T

here was vibrancy in the room at the fourth ARN Emerging Leaders Forum in Sydney in May. Over 170 future tech leaders attended to learn from their peers, from the industry’s influencers and from the ARN Hall of Fame members there to mentor and encourage.

This year we heard keynotes from industry superstars James Bergl from Datto and Oreta’s Sachin Verma .

Bergl amused and entertained the audience with stories of starting his career as a jet ski operator in Bermuda before realising how to live his “best work life” in his current career directing APAC sales.

His leadership message was clear to the high potential talent in the audience – have fun at work, be a team builder and think about your legacy.

Verma’s keynote took a different path which equally resonated with the aspiring high-flyers in the room. He focused on the importance of finding the gap, rolling the dice, taking the risk. He quoted Tony Robbins – “If you want to take the island, burn the boat”. And as a compassionate entrepreneur, he passed on his grandmother’s advice that “wealth is like holding sand. The more you share, the more will come back to you”.

The Emerging Leaders panel was made up of three exceptional millennials.

Faced with questions about the problem of attracting young talent to the tech workforce, Sharlie Raymond of Outcomex, Nicole Freeman from Microsoft and NEXTGEN's James Walters deliberated over the paradox of why a generation brought up with technology were shunning careers in the industry. There was strong audience consensus when they discussed the needs of millennials in

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

today’s workplace – strong collaborative environments, real time results, and a dynamic work culture.

Before the attendees went into the mentoring groups run by the ARN Hall of Fame members and industry influencers, the inaugural ARN 30 Under 30 Tech Awards winners were revealed. Thirty exceptional individuals were recognised for their achievements over six categories – management, entrepreneur, sales, marketing, technical and human resources.

The excitement was intense as the winners were announced and mobbed the stage for their group photo. See the story on p4 and, also in this issue, a 32 page honour roll profiling these emerging tech leaders.

ARN congratulates all winners, finalists and nominees of the 2019 30 Under 30 Tech Awards. What an inspiring lot you are!

And speaking of collaboration and wonderful millennials, a big thank you to Nik Gorbachev and Christine Wong who helped bring this Future Leaders issue together. They went well beyond their job descriptions to source content, liaise with journalists and sub editors, and design and compile this special edition. They are worthy millennials and it is a privilege to work with them.

samira_sarraf@idg.com.au

journalist: julia talevski julia_talevski@idg.com.au

journalist: eleanor dickinson eleanor_dickinson@idg.com.au

graphic designer: simon wiltshire smnwiltshire@gmail.com

photographer: christine wong info@christinewongphotography.com

COMMERCIAL chief revenue officer: janice tong janice_tong@idg.com.au (02) 9902 2759

sales director: cherry yumul cherry_yumul@idg.com.au (02) 9902 2756

account director: eduardo silva eduardo_silva@idg.com.au (02) 9902 2769

account manager: blayne reilly-sealy blayne_reilly-sealy@idg.com.au (02) 9902 2753

events manager: amy woodhead amy_woodhead@idg.com.au (02) 9902 2775

data and campaigns manager: nik gorbachev nik_gorbachev@idg.com.au (02) 9902 2784

marketing and events coordinator: christine wong christine_wong@idg.com.au (02) 9902 2737

managing director: barbara simon idg founder: patrick j mcgovern Editorial published in ARN may not be reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission.

Copyright 2019, IDG Communications ARN is published by IDG Communications Pty Ltd PO Box 1753, North Sydney, NSW, 2059.

Phone: (02) 9902 2700

SUSAN SEARLE PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER – ARN

IDG is the publisher of ARN and its website (www.arnnet.com.au). If you choose to accept offers, enter competitions or complete surveys contained within them you may be required to provide information about yourself to IDG. IDG will use this information to provide you with products or services you have requested, and may supply your information to contractors that help IDG to do this. IDG may also use your information to inform you of other IDG publications, products, services and events, or give your information to organisations that are providing special prizes or offers and that are clearly associated with the offer. Unless you tell us not to, we may give your information to other organisations that may use it to inform you about other products, services or events or to give to other organisations that may use it for this purpose. To gain access to the information IDG holds about you, please contact IDG’s Privacy Officer at IDG Communications Pty Ltd, Level 10, 15 Blue St, North Sydney, NSW, 2060.

Windows 10 Pro means business

4

Emerging Leaders 2019

Young Bloods taking the channel by storm

IN THE WAKE OF THIS YEAR’S HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL ARN EMERGING LEADERS FORUM, ELEANOR DICKINSON REPORTS ON THE YOUNG TALENT TAKING THE CHANNEL

BY STORM AND ASKS WHY ATTRACTING IT REMAINS SUCH A CHALLENGE.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

Emerging Leaders 2019

Less than two decades ago, a couple of industrious 22-year-olds launched a product that would eventually transform the technology landscape.

From the confines of their Sydney student accommodation, the two young men slowly and quietly built the foundations of a $30-billion dollar global business they called Atlassian, all the while mired in $10,000 of credit card debt.

Today, the Atlassian story is part of start-up folklore and its founders, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, have become the poster boys for both Australia’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and youthful innovation. But that was then and this is now and we are waiting for the next big thing.

Across the Pacific, there is no shortage of start-up phenomenons that have been founded by people under the age of 30. They include Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Quora, SnapChat and Dropbox. Names like these are rattled off by budding young graduates seeking their dream career path. But how many of those graduates are either tempted by traditional IT vendors like IBM, Intel and Microsoft or have heard of some of ANZ’s biggest channel players such as Datacom and Dimension Data, let alone the smaller players?

In the end it becomes a question of whether Australia’s IT industry is doing enough to attract a new generation of talent.

The ARN Emerging Leaders Forum, held at the Ivy Sunroom in Sydney on May 4, addressed these and other vital topics and questions. The event, now in its fourth year, featured a strong mix of keynotes and panel discussions by both industry leaders and rising stars.

The 30 Under 30 Tech Awards

ARN also unveiled the inaugural 30 Under 30 Tech Awards recognising 30 individuals for their outstanding achievements across six categories: management, entrepreneur, sales, marketing, technical, and human resources. As the awards revealed, the IT community is awash with young talent, but it still faces significant challenges.

IT degree not needed One of 10 winners in the sales category, Datto channel sales executive, Lauren Escalona, said

5

the IT channel is far from an obvious career choice for any student – tech or otherwise.

“The channel doesn’t have a lot to do with people’s everyday lives,” she said.

The seeds of Escalona’s own journey into IT were sown by her own mother, who has worked in the industry her entire career. “I fell into it. I wasn’t seeking the industry out. I didn’t study technology. But a lot of recruiters were steering me towards technology and it seemed to be in-demand,” she said. “My mum has also been in the channel for a long time and I ended up following in her footsteps,” she said. “That said, as we are predominantly a sales team, most of the people at Datto are not IT graduates.”

Many of Escalona’s fellow 30 Under 30 Winners also “fell” into the IT industry.

Jason Duerden, who became A/NZ country manager at Blackberry Cylance three years after his graduation, was one of them. “It’s not really the first choice when you go through university. The top choices are usually PR, education or health, but slowly that is changing,” he said.

Duerden studied the Web and creative design rather than IT or technology. However, after initially working as an event crew manager, he was encouraged to consider the technology industry by a friend who worked for Oracle.

Two years after joining Aquion as a graduate, Duerden’s career path was on a steep incline at cybersecurity company, BlackBerry Cylance, as he moved from channel head to country manager. “I made my way in at an entry level and worked my way up. IT is an industry which allows you to accelerate your career very quickly if you are fully-focused,”

Grow like Manchester United

A community manager at IT consultancy firm Vibrato and 30 Under 30 winner in the Human Resources (HR) category, Molly Rowe, said the challenges of attracting talent make her job a sales role. “As HR, we are very much selling our differentiators and our company culture.

“What people are looking for, more than anything else, is a dynamic place to work. Something that will challenge them and provide them with opportunities for the future, but also surround them with Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

6

Emerging Leaders 2019

James Bergl (Datto) addresses the 2019 Emerging Leaders Forum.

“IT is an industry which allows you to accelerate your career very quickly if you are fully-focused” peers who are worth learning from. It’s about providing them with an opportunity that aligns with their goals.”

Escalona, who has now been with Datto for more than three years, said businesses should be developed like Manchester United grows its football team – filter in youngsters at ground level and then coach them to be part of the senior team so they feel a sense of dedication to other people.

It is, however, a two-way equation.

The young talent must also be committed to succeeding and going the distance.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

The Emerging Leaders Forum heard how many great leaders in their respective fields succeeded only after serious setbacks.

Marvel Comics legend, Stan Lee, spent his early career getting lunches and erasing pencil marks from finished comic pages.

He was already 39 years old when, in 1961, he created his first comic. Thomas Edison conducted 1000 failed experiments, but created the light bulb on his 1001st.

The moral of the stories is simple: Don’t give up after a setback or failure because success could be just around the corner.

Ilia Vince is proof positive of that.

Early in his career he found it hard to gain a foothold in the industry but he persevered and eventually started not one but two companies. “I was 17 and applying for jobs in the IT industry but I was so young and inexperienced that nobody wanted to hire me. So I thought I would create my own company,” he said.

That was online marketing company, Creative Web, which he eventually sold his equity in and subsequently founded Qubasoft

Emerging Leaders 2019

7

in Australia. Vince’s persistence saw his name added to the 30 Under 30 winners list in the entrepreneurial category.

APCD executive manager solution and governance, Amy Reynolds, agrees that occasional failures can lead to personal growth. “Some days will be tough,” she said.

“It’s when we rough it out that we truly learn.

Make sure you reflect on these days and recognise how you could have improved a situation, or handled a bad situation better.

Don’t hesitate to ask your peers how they may have managed a similar experience. You truly do learn from your mistakes.”

Datto’s Escalona added: “We are still finding our feet and where to go, but one day we will be the leaders of this industry.”

Emerging Leaders audience.

“What people are looking for, more than anything else, is a dynamic place to work.”

Winners 30 Under 30 Tech Awards 2019.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

8

Emerging Leaders James Bergl

CHRISTINE WONG

James Bergl (Datto)

How to work your

BEST LIFE DATTO ASIA PACIFIC’ DIRECTOR SALES, JAMES BERGL, SHARES HIS LIFE LESSONS ON WORK, FULFILLMENT AND ESTABLISHING A LEGACY IN THE IT INDUSTRY. ELEANOR DICKINSON REPORTS. James Bergl is one of the few people in the world who can say he made headlines in his first week on the job.

Having made the jump from jet ski tour operator to insurance suit, the Bermuda-native caught the attention of the island’s local press when he got his tie stuck in the office shredder.

Fortunately for Bergl, now director of sales at Datto Asia-Pacific, shredding wasn’t a prerequisite for his first foray into the IT industry as a sales graduate with SAP in London.

“I made the mistake of waiting until the last minute to apply for jobs, so all Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

the good candidates got out there first and took the best jobs,” he said, during his keynote address at the ARN Emerging Leaders forum. “Fortunately SAP was a little bit late to the mark as well, so I was able to get myself in the door.

It did wonders for my CV, especially in the early days.”

From SAP, Bergl jumped in and out of a variety of IT roles in the UK with companies such as Autotask, Eloqua, and N-able Technologies before its acquisition by Solar Winds.

It was this job that eventually landed Bergl “the jackpot” role of N-able

Technologies Asia Pacific sales manager in Sydney. But despite the role seemingly offering everything – money, freedom, travel and adventure– two years later, he found himself questioning everything he had previously valued.

“I was handicapped by this thought that I’ve got to go out there and make money,” he said. “It reached a point where I thought: ‘What is this all about? Is this what I’ve got in store for the rest of my life, just waking up and going to a job.’ And I realised that I had to think beyond work for true happiness in the workplace and I had to think big.”

After some self-reflection, it became clear to Bergl that he was seeking something more substantial to put his name to. “I wanted to build something. I just didn’t want to be a cog in a wheel,” he said.

As luck would have it, an American cybersecurity and data back-up company named Datto was looking for somebody to help it launch in Australia. Within months, Bergl was out of his stable job and running a fledgling business from his Sydney bedroom.

And he’s never looked back.

Fun and the future

Four years later, as Datto goes from strengthto-strength in APAC, Bergl has no shortage of life lessons from his eclectic career. They include getting teams and employees in the right place behind a company strategy and leading by example. “If you, as a leader, can keep that brave face and carve out new territory, then your staff are going to follow you,” he said.

But most importantly, it’s about having fun. “Life is too short to not have fun when you wake up and go to work every day and then build something together as a team.

If we can do that, it is meaningful to me.”

And what parting words of advice did he have for the channel’s emerging talent?

“Think about your legacy as an individual in terms of the job that you are doing today and what is it that you want to create in your social life and your work life? You can go out there and you can accomplish it if you want to.

“Take action now. You can’t win sitting on the sidelines. Dive in the deep end and swim. Go out there and go work your best life.”

The Ultimate Desktop Experience for the Surface Pro

The Ultimate Docking Solution for Surface Pro has arrived.

Exclusively Designed for Surface Pro, Integrating Microsoft’s proprietary Surface Connect technology, users can connect with confidence for a seamless dock and charge experience that looks as good as it functions with a small desktop footprint and clean lines.

™ The Professionals’ Choice For more information please visit

www.kensington.com/au/au/home

10 Emerging Leaders Panel

PANEL:

PING PONG, PARADOXES & PRIORITIES WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A GENERATION OF KIDS RAISED ON TECHNOLOGY DOESN’T SEEM PARTICULARLY INTERESTED IN WORKING IN THE INDUSTRY THAT NOT ONLY SPAWNS THEIR GADGETS BUT DELIVERS THE CORE OF THEIR LIFESTYLES? ELEANOR DICKINSON LEARNS FROM THE EMERGING LEADERS PANEL ABOUT THE MILLENNIAL GENERATION AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CHANNEL AND IT. Millennial-mockery has become something of a media pastime of late, whether it’s their social media habits, preference for craft beer and, of course, avocado on toast. But these seemingly harmless stereotypes betray a more concerning attitude towards the generation aged between 18 and 35.

“We just hear about how we are lazy and change jobs all the time,” Outcomex channel manager, Sharlie Raymond, said.

“We have received a lot of bad press during the last 10 years.”

However, this generation is the one IT channel needs According to Tech Research Asia executive consultant and industry analyst, Mark Iles, only about seven per cent of millennials work in the current IT tech workforce. Meanwhile, according to one of Australia’s largest job sites, Seek, there are 17,000 IT jobs up for grabs. Over the next five years, Australia will need 100,000 technology workers to meet the needs of a rapidly changing industry. According to research by the World Economic Forum, millennials are expected to make up 75 per cent of the Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

workforce by 2025.

It’s a perplexing problem which Raymond acknowledged during the panel discussion at the ARN Emerging Leaders Forum, particularly as this is a generation whose early lives were immersed in technology from Walkmans and iPods to Nintendo 64s.

But while younger technology talent may be drawn to the world of start-ups and social media giants such as Facebook and Google, the traditional IT industry is battling to bridge the age gaps within its workforce.

“It’s a bit of a paradox considering that we grow up with IT and it’s important to have an iPhone in our hands these days,” Nextgen business manager, James Walters, said. “But then you get into the IT industry and it is seen as a bit of an old man’s club.”

The overall picture is even worse.

According to Tech Research Asia, only eight per cent of the IT and telecommunications workforce is under 24 years old, the age of recent graduates.

“We need that talent in our industry or they are going to go elsewhere,” Microsoft A/NZ Dell EMC lead and channel executive,

Nicole Freeman, said. “It’s becoming harder to become profitable in our businesses. If we’re not attracting that sort of talent, we’re going to fall behind and we risk not being change agents.

“A millennial could be your boss tomorrow, they could be running the show.

If you don’t know how to work with that person and engage with them, how can you be successful? How do you get the most out of them and how do they get the most out of you?”

Making millennials tick

Attracting younger talent to technology companies is often reduced to simple Silicon Valley-style gimmicks like pool and ping pong tables. And, admittedly, Nextgen does have a beer tap, Walters said, but, of course, employee attraction and retention goes much deeper. “We put culture first – collaborative culture and the opportunities that we create for our staff. But that has to be very genuine.

If you’re putting a beer tap in or a yoga class, and you’re genuine about it, I think that really appeals to them.”

Panel Emerging Leaders

For Freeman, whose office has a kombucha tap, an open, driven environment is paramount. “We’re used to social media,” she said. “We like Instagram. So I think an environment where millennials thrive and are drawn to has to have open communication, real-time responses and real-time results.”

“We don’t want to sit there and have meetings that take forever to get an outcome.

Millennials love and are attracted to environments that create change, instant responses and let them run and thrive.”

Such environments are not necessarily exclusive to start-ups. For Raymond, whose career already spans a small start-up, a Canadian national bank and the 80-person Outcomex in Sydney, the best companies are

were the suited pioneers who built the likes of Microsoft, Dell, IBM, and Dimension Data and Data#3 in Australia; IT giants that have weathered multiple technology revolutions in the space of a few decades, yet still endure and thrive today. And then when a fitbit-wearing 28-year-old in chinos becomes a potential threat, working in harmony becomes a test for both parties.

“A millennial could be your boss tomorrow, they could be running the show” According to Walters, millennials need to learn how to “manage up” when it comes to working with Baby Boomer bosses for the

11

On the challenges of career progression, the panel also discussed whether millennials are being held back by a preference to grow as a team as opposed to standing out as an individual – something Walters disagreed with. For him, the millennial generation is “very ambitious”.

“If we want to be ambitious and be change agents then we need to take on a solution not a problem,” he said.

According to Raymond, while it was important for the younger generation to make their voices heard, it was always worth taking account of a boss’s priorities. “What he wants to know is how much it costs, how easy it is to do and how much he doesn’t have to do?,” she said. “What is the return-oninvestment? If he actually doesn’t have to do

L-R: Sharlie Raymond (Outcomex); James Walters (Nextgen) and Nicole Freeman (Microsoft)

those where you can have meaningful impact.

“I’ve been very lucky in my career because I’ve chosen bosses over companies. There is one piece of advice I can give. In your early 20s, do not choose the shiny company. Go for a boss who is going to believe in you and give you responsibilities and the chance to fail and to try again.”

Managing down - or up?

Now, as the next wave of young graduates prepare to leave Australia’s universities, and as millennials morph into Generation Z, it is obvious relationships with their older peers will become even more critical. A gap, both generational and in experience, can sometimes lead to conflict – especially as people under 35 years old are increasingly taking on senior positions.

It is hardly surprising, given the legacy left by so-called Baby Boomer generation. These

benefit of all parties and business growth.

To do this, “it is key to understand what motivates them and their goals,” he said. “It can be how to change a new process, how to involve new tech in business. So if you can do that, you can successfully manage a Baby Boomer.”

Freeman said if this was the case it required a different approach to management and a level of give-and-take from both parties. “To manage up for Baby Boomers and to manage down is about listening. It’s the patience factor. I’m terribly impatient. I want everything done now because I move so fast, because my mind moves so fast.

“So it’s about listening, breaking it down for me, keeping me at a steady pace and pulling out those little nuggets and keeping me accountable and tasked on those few particular elements that will help drive your business.”

anything about it, you know you get a yes answer.”

Meanwhile, Freeman, who describes herself as being on the edge of the millennial generation, believes career progression stems from staying relevant and attuned to the changing industry in order to achieve growth.

“There are a lot of millennials how are thriving at the moment. They are going to create their own start-ups and I find, sitting in a big corporation, that I don’t know how to go after that business,” she said.

“If I’m not relevant to them, they will go somewhere else. Again, if I can’t talk their language and know where their motivation buttons are, and how to give them that quick response, I’m going to fall behind. I’m going to become a dinosaur and they won’t want to deal with me.”

Photos by Christine Wong. arnnet.com.au Q2 2019

12 Emerging Leaders Sachin Verma

ORETA’S SACHIN VERMA SHARES HIS LESSONS ON GOING IT ALONE, LEADERSHIP AND WHY SHARING WEALTH ALWAYS PAYS ITS DUES. ELEANOR DICKINSON REPORTS. Sachin Verma (Oreta)

CHRISTINE WONG

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

Sachin Verma was halfway through a civil engineering degree when he realised something wasn’t working for him. Having been raised in India to believe his career prospects were “engineer, judge or doctor”, Verma had an epiphany when he realised coding, not buildings, was his true passion. Twenty years later, the founder and managing director of Oreta has never looked back.

Speaking about his two-decade IT career during the ARN Emerging Leaders forum, Verma reminisced about how, after four years at Telstra, he decided to take the plunge and found his own company in 2015.

“I saw a gap. That gap was cloud services. And that is when you have really have a moment. That’s the time when you roll the dice.”

Until then, Verma had held a series of IT roles at companies such as British supermarket chain, Tesco, and Internet services company, EarthLink, before settling in Australia in 2006 with Telstra Smart Community. But after nine years of working for Telstra, Verma acknowledged he had to make a change.

“I’d had enough of my job,” he said. “I wasn’t going anywhere.

I went to my wife and said, ‘What if I put our savings on the line for the next few years? I will make it up to you.’ She was kind enough to let me play with them. And here we are.”

Almost four years after it was founded, Oreta now employs 60 people, is a premier partner of Google Cloud, and recently partnered with Telstra to open a new Business Technology Centre in Melbourne.

That decision to leave Telstra and build his own business was a gamble, Verma said, but it taught him several valuable life lessons about taking opportunities. “As the saying goes from Tony Robbins: ‘If you want to take the island, burn the boats’.

“So I say to you, burn your boats. Don’t use excuses like; ‘I don’t have money’; ‘It’s too risky’; ‘The market is not good’. Absolutely not!

Just go and burn the boat and you can take the island. You don’t want to be 60, and look back at your life and say: ‘Should I have done that?’”

Burning boats aside, some of the best advice Verma received comes from much earlier in his life: “My grandma used to tell me that wealth is like holding sand,” he said. “The tighter you hold it, the less you’ve got. Right? It’s a saying that has stayed with me for a very long time.

“I want to give away wealth to my team because it has created more wealth for us as a business. The more you share, the more will come back to you.”

In addition, Verma also learned the importance of loosening the reins on his workforce. “I wanted to be the micro-manager in the business. I wanted to control the outcome. But that’s when you need to have faith in the team and let people do the job. Now I want to be the least strict person in my company, so I can go out and make a difference.”

Verma said, as the technology ecosystem and cloud services market continues to evolve, you need to be ready for change. “You need to continuously be thinking about your business model. Don’t just sit easy on your lounge – there is nothing but change out there.”

The whole is greater than the sum of its partners Smart partnerships do more than benefit the businesses involved. Pooling assets, resources and knowledge creates a richer business landscape for all. When you partner with Telstra, you have the backing of Australia’s largest telecommunications and technology company and its network behind you.

See why hundreds of tech businesses in Australia and overseas have partnered with Telstra to shape Australia’s future technological landscape.

Visit telstra.com.au/channelpartners.

14 Roundtable NBN Co

Drawing Up a Digital Plan:

How Can Partners Trigger Customer Transformation?

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

NBN Co Roundtable

THIS EXCLUSIVE ARN ROUNDTABLE, IN ASSOCIATION WITH NBN CO AND CISCO, OUTLINED THE MARKET POTENTIAL FOR PARTNERS IN AUSTRALIA, ASSESSING THE CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS IN 2019 AND HOW THE CHANNEL CAN CREATE NEW BUSINESS THROUGH NEW ALLIANCES. JAMES HENDERSON REPORTS.

With investments increasing and migrations escalating, customers are designing a future in which digital transformation becomes reality. However, turning such digital aspirations into deployments requires a blueprint for business. Armed with insights, expertise, and a mandate to maximise the potential of new technologies, the channel is perfectly positioned to help businesses achieve their full digital potential.

Partners must assume a trusted role in developing digital strategies for customers, alongside specialisation in migration, security, networking, collaboration and productivity.

“We are operating in a market that is clearly mature from a digital perspective,” observed Sam Gerner, enterprise and digital transformation director at Cisco. “Australia is a mature economy in that we’re very well connected to other global markets, which is also driving a lot of innovation through technology. The main characteristics of Australia centre around being both incredibly small and isolated, which means we have to act bigger than we are to compete.”

For Gerner, Australia is a nation housing an army of “fast followers”, spanning the enterprise, mid-market and small to medium business (SMB) sectors. “We watch the market then we just jump in, which has been the case with cloud and every technology that Cisco has brought to the local market,” Gerner added. “Australia has become one of the world’s fastest growing markets in terms of technology adoption, but we need to guard against complacency. Yes, there’s appetite for technological disruption and digital transformation, but businesses today must

think strategically about their investments.”

According to Gerner, the nbn™ broadband access network represents a “compelling event” capable of guarding against such digital complacency, especially within the evolving SMB market. NBN Co and Cisco have entered into a framework agreement in 2018 under which they plan to focus on joint education and engagement activities targeted at SMBs across the country. Both parties are planning to invest in joint digital marketing activities to help share how SMBs can digitally transform their business with Cisco infrastructure, cloud-based applications and services that are powered by business nbn™ solutions.

“This isn’t about broadband,” said Keith Masterton, general manager of business channels at NBN Co. “This is about what partners can help customers achieve through access to a faster network. To achieve this, we want to work with leading vendors such as Cisco that are relevant to this conversation from a customer perspective. Partners can create business-grade solutions, leveraging expertise close to the network, starting from switches and routers, building up through the stack into areas such as collaboration and productivity. Cisco has fantastic enterprise heritage and huge expertise in the SMB space, as they scale down into that market. We want to be part of that journey as our focus is on extending that capability into SMB markets, so smaller businesses can experience enterprise-grade services. This partnership represents a natural fit for the channel and for partners, this is a case of one plus one equals three.”

15

Digital requirements

To understand the requirements of the small business sector, Cisco conducted research with IDC, finding that 61 per cent of SMBs in Australia are classified as “digitally mature”, in the sense that they have started their digital journey in some capacity. “For some, it was as simple as going to box.com or for others, it was installing an IP phone system,” explained Nykaj Nair, segment director of Small Business at Cisco. “Digital means different things to different people.”

After amalgamating multiple streams of data, Nair and his team curated a portfolio detailing the digital requirements of SMBs. “SMBs are not looking at technology as an enabler or to change their entire business, it’s more with survival in mind,” Nair observed. “SMBs realise that they could get left behind in an increasingly global business economy. Of the 61 per cent that are digitally mature, most of the investment was focused on cloud and security, such as apps that run their business. This could be a point of sale or accounting system, or a productivity suite.”

But while cloud and security seemingly go “hand in hand”, Nair said SMBs occupy an “inherent fear” regarding skill sets in this digital age. “Fear came out front and centre in the research,” Nair added. “SMBs realise that if they don’t have the right digital skills or technologies, they could lose significant competitive advantage.”

Yet while SMBs acknowledge the consequences of inaction, customers in general - spanning enterprise and midmarket also - require direction from external technology providers and channel partners in addition to internal strategies. “We see both coming into play in the market,” said Clare Burman-Reynard, sales manager at The Missing Link. “Customers are wanting to digitalise and create modern workplaces for example, but they also want to understand how to achieve this. One of the biggest challenges we face is around legacy. If you started a business today, you wouldn’t buy servers, instead you would just put everything in the cloud and leverage a third party platform. Therefore, we’re challenged with transitioning traditional businesses with legacy commitments into the modern era.” arnnet.com.au Q2 2019

16 Roundtable NBN Co

According to Jason Ward, territory manager of NSW and ACT at Blue Apache, a digital strategy should be created from the outset with customers, developed during the onboarding process. “We develop this strategy at the start of the partnership and that changes depending on the business requirements,” he explained.

“Within the SMB space especially, we’re seeing resistance from customers that have made sizeable investments in IT already. They don’t necessarily want to change and usually only a major incident happening would change that.”

For Ward, SMBs require a “trigger point” in the pursuit of transformation agendas, as a way of justifying increased technology spend. “Business processes have been built around the way they do things today,” he acknowledged. “Not all SMBs want to go down the cloud path, in fact some small businesses want to hold onto their data and keep it safe in a server room. The mentality can be different depending on the customer size.”

As outlined by Garth Sperring, practice lead of network and security at Nexon Asia Pacific, customers are now also expecting the channel to assume risk as a part of a two-way transformation partnership. “We’re going to support our customers and share risk,” he said. “If a customer wants to consume products and

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

services on a per user per month basis, then we will help them shift from point A to point B. I think that helps eliminate the fear from customers because most realise they have got to change, the problem is they don’t always realise which area to change. We are here to help customers move from A to B and then C if they require.”

“Customers are wanting to digitalise and create modern workplaces for example, but they also want to understand how to achieve this.”

Keith Masterton (NBN Co) and Jon Evans (Enablis)

Triggering transformation

In looking ahead, central to customer transformation success will be the channel as businesses remain underprepared for the digital wave impacting Australia. Whether it be replacing legacy networks or creating a coherent digital environment, organisations remain hamstrung by an inability to innovate at speed. But with digital transformation sitting at the top of the agenda across almost every industry sector, the disparity between intention and execution subsequently creates new opportunities for partners.

“This transformation will be driven by the channel,” outlined Dean Hutchinson, CEO of Hal Group. “We operate as a managed service provider [MSP] and act as the IT department for a lot of our customers. A lot of our customers now want to move workloads to the cloud and adopt digital technologies, they realise the benefits and are counting on us to lead them down that path.”

Echoing Hutchinson’s observations, Andrew Charitou, national manager of ICT channel at NBN Co, called on both customers and partners to “transition and transform. That’s the message in the channel today,” he said.

“The nbn™ access network represents one of the biggest opportunities for digital transformation, this is a catalyst and the compelling event that customers were waiting for. This can provide increased speed and agility, backed up by access to enterprisegrade business solutions at SMB level.

It’s clear that end users are wanting to make a change, the onus is now on the channel to help.”

As many business leaders begin to take deliberate steps towards creating a digital world - as initiatives and pilots become mainstream - the need for trusted advisers, consultants and strategists heightens.

Consequently, the channel can capitalise on the immaturity and complexity of the digital transition, assisting organisations currently at a

NBN Co Roundtable

L-R: Garth Sperring (Nexon); Keith Masterton (NBN Co); Cameron Cumming (Counterparts Technology); Tristan Warner (eNerds); Andrew Charitou (NBN Co); Dean Hutchinson (Hal Group); Sam Gerner (Cisco); Justin Melton (Chill IT); Nathan Georges (Outcomex); Nykaj Nair (Cisco); Jason Ward (blueAPACHE); Clare Burman (The Missing Link); Jon Evans (Enablis) and James Henderson (ARN)

transformation crossroads.

“Business transformation makes complete sense from our perspective,” said Cameron Cumming, client engagement director of Counterparts Technology. “As consultants, we’re talking to customers about what their roadmap in the market is, what they want to achieve and crucially how technology can help them achieve that. Perhaps the term digital transformation has become a little overused in this sales-centred industry, but at the heart of it we’re using technology to enable customers to do something different.”

Justin Melton, CEO of Chill IT,

17

will reward the channel partner for recommending and the end customer connecting a business nbn™ solution either directly or indirectly via their retail service provider.

“Most businesses have a desire to transform and there’s huge opportunity in the market today,” added Jon Evans, CEO at Enablis. “It’s crucial to ensure your foundation is right when embarking on any kind of digital transformation strategy, and this partnership helps customers get their house in order. We are a long-term Cisco partner and that’s in our DNA, now we have the chance to transform further through the nbn™ Channel play network.”

Building on in-market channel In taking the conversation further, success, Cisco and NBN Co also Nathan Georges, data centre practice both plan to launch programs for lead at Outcomex, also acknowledged channel partners aimed at digitising that success in digital transformation Australian SMBs. It is planned that the is dependent on a strong foundational Cisco program will reward channel platform. “It’s clear that this partners when they purchase Cisco foundation can enable lots of new start solutions, and the nbn program innovative features for customers and

acknowledged that the channel also has an advisory role to play in helping customers cut through the market hype, as new technologies - such as 5G, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence - take centre stage. “All of these different technologies have a complementary element to consider,” he added. “There’s a lot of components for customers to understand but our role is to help them make sense of the changes. If you’re having a managed relationship with your customer, you can have an ongoing transformational conversation monthly which is an easier concept to sell.”

arnnet.com.au Q2 2019

18 Roundtable NBN Co

the underlying infrastructure is central to that,” he explained. “Through solid infrastructure and quality broadband for example, customers can begin to add in pockets of innovation which is key to market differentiation.”

For Tristan Warner, CEO of eNerds, the concept of “getting your house in order” has dictated the provider’s customer strategy during the past 12 months. “We’ve been embarking on roadmap discussions with our customers,” he said. “This is about creating a checklist of 10-15 base-level aspects that they should have in their business, such as strong connectivity and telephony for example. But I’m sure the channel would also agree that as an MSP, we’ve been digitally transforming our customers for years in many ways.

It would be remiss of eNerds as a trusted IT provider to not cater for such needs.”

In a direct address to the Australian partners, Nair said that Cisco’s working with NBN Co to educate the market can help provide “a level of trust” for SMBs in an increasingly complex digital market.

But crucially, the channel will be at the core of such transformation.

“We’re providing the trust but

 Garth Sperring (Nexon) and Nykaj Nair (Cisco)

“Most businesses have a desire to transform and there’s huge opportunity in the market today”  Sam Gerner (Cisco) and Tristan Warner (eNerds)

from our research with customers, they will only transform through MSPs,” Nair outlined. “The foundation is now in place but what else can we do? What does transformation look like from the customer perspective?

There’s huge value in becoming an nbn™ business adviser because registering for our program allows ICT professionals to capitalise on this opportunity.”

Created to foster business productivity and innovation, Masterton concluded that NBN Co represents “more than broadband” for the channel, rather a chance to help Australian organisations “cross the digital divide. More and more businesses are signing up to services over the nbn™ access network, we’re connecting as many as 20,000 new organisations a month,” Masterton added. “The channel is in the sweet spot of providing advisory services around this, but only if they keep their eyes firmly on the customer.

“We created a channel so customers could leverage the knowledge of nbn™ business advisers to extract the full benefits of this transformational change.”

This roundtable was in association with NBN Co and Cisco.

Photos by Christine Wong.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

Business as usual is changing.

Are you ready?

Dicker Data is working with Cisco and business nbn™ to help channel partners create new revenue streams as your customers transition to a digitised future.

Find out more - https://www.nbncisco-channelprogram.com/

20 Roundtable Symantec

TRANSITIONING TO THE NEW

SECURITY FRONTIERS

THIS EXCLUSIVE ARN ROUNDTABLE, IN ASSOCIATION WITH SYMANTEC AND ARROW ECS ANZ, EXAMINED KEY MARKET CHALLENGES AROUND CLOUD MIGRATIONS. MATT SAINSBURY REPORTS.

L-R: Rickey Gilotra (Sense of Security); Josh Watts (Harbour IT); Klasie Holtzhausen (Symantec); Noel Allnutt (Solista); Adam Nixon (Core Technology Partners); Ronnie Altit (Insentra); Sash Vasilevski (Security Centric); John Ferlito (AC3); Lyncoln de Mello (Brennan IT); Mark Hofman (Shearwater Solutions); David Browne (Datacom); Ryan Mistry (Zirilio); Nick Verykios (Arrow ECS ANZ); James Henderson (ARN); Dushern Pather (TechSpecialist) and Dane Meah (InfoTrust) Q2 019 arnnet.com.au

Symantec Roundtable

In the middle of 2018, Microsoft registered a major achievement with its cloud productivity solution, Office 365, with more than half of all organisations making use of it globally, according to a Bitglass report on cloud adoption for 2018.

While Office 365 delivers significant productivity and efficiency benefits, its new approach to security is proving a challenge to some Australian organisations.

“With so many applications moving into the cloud - including Office 365 – we are sometimes seeing the focus is on ease of access rather than making sure that everything is secure,” Symantec senior director of A/NZ channels, Klasie Holtzhausen, said.

“There also needs to be a change in approach to security as it’s no longer about the device; rather it’s about the data that is being stored in the cloud. Many customers today are struggling to conceptualise how they ensure their information remains secure in the cloud.”

The stakes are high. Last year, an investigation by Fairfax Media/ Nine News revealed China’s peak security agency had directed a surge in cloud-based cyber attacks on Australian companies in an attempt to steal commercial data and secrets.

And 60 per cent of Australian organisations reported their business had been interrupted due to a security breach in the last year, according to a Telstra security report in 2018.

Datacom Australia practice manager for architecture and security, David Browne, said one of the issues that organisations faced with the cloud is the convenience of it, and this led to some poor decisions being made.

“It was very easy and cost effective because you could just throw a credit card across it,” he said.

“It wasn’t until there was a couple of breaches that things changed.

In the old days, purchasing had an order. Somebody needed a server because they were building a new

Nick Verykios (Arrow ECS ANZ)

application or providing a new capability for the organisation, so they would put a request in, and it would go to IT, change control, then architecture and then security got involved.

“Cloud momentarily took some of that process away and it’s only now we’re seeing the core of some of that coming back. Now, though, the challenges are going to be more around the surface computer. What security controls need to be applied, or should be applied, in those areas? And how do you still maintain security posture around that.”

Managing customer expectations

Part of the issue the channel faces is the changing expectation of customers and the way they look to use technology. Once security was a responsibility the customer took on for themselves. They would ensure their business would acquire solutions to deploy a strong, robust security perimeter around their technology assets, and the data held on them.

But in moving data, applications and processes to the cloud, many enterprises now expect security to be standard in the solutions they

21

are deploying. In other words, when an organisation deploys Office 365, it expects the servers on which it is accessing Office 365 to be secured by their provider.

“In the traditional technology space, if we don’t see security is a top of mind issue then we’re asking the wrong questions and the narrative becomes wrong,” Arrow ECS managing director, Nick Verykios, said.

“But from an information point of view, the cloud is part of the overall infrastructure as far as they’re concerned. There is an implication that it will be secure. What the customer is interested in is the information and its secure use. So now, security is an information discussion.”

There is an opportunity here for the channel, according to Core Technology Partners director and co-founder, Adam Nixon. With the shifting focus on security, away from the perimeter and point solutions, many organisations lack the internal expertise and capabilities to qualify and quantify their risk profiles. Data and information is the province of data scientists to manage, and data scientists are expecting to see their salaries increase substantially over the next couple of years as demand arnnet.com.au Q2 2019

22 Roundtable Symantec

for their expertise far outpaces the availability of talent.

“Customers are now coming to us and driving the discussion,” Nixon said. “They want the analytics. They want us to review it for them. They want to know where their risk is and the services we can provide to ensure they are compliant with current and likely future legislation.

“It all comes back to their application and their risk, and while there is a skills shortage within the channel there is an even more significant one in our customers. They just don’t have the skill set.”

So who is ultimately responsible for the security of an environment? Is it the enterprise, which is outsourcing its applications, such as Office 365, to the cloud, but is also ultimately creating, collecting and storing the data on the service? Or is it the providers who – implicitly or explicitly – are expected to provide a secure service?

“The struggle as a service provider is in discussing the full gamut of questions that need to be asked,” AC3 head of product and technology, John Ferlito, said, on the process a partner needs to go through in deciding Q2 019 arnnet.com.au

 L-R: Dushern Pather (TechSpecialist) and Klasie Holtzhausen (Symantec)  David Browne (Datacom)

“Many customers today are struggling to conceptualise how they ensure their information remains secure in the cloud”

whether the ultimate responsibility for security lies with the customer or the provider. “Where was funding to it? Is it the consultant that wrecked the application? Is it a person who deployed the application and then walked away and did something the wrong way? Is it our responsibility to continue to support older applications?”

“More often than not what we’re seeing across enterprise is there’s

actual delineation now between who owns the application,” Solista co-founder and director, Noel Allnutt, said.

“It’s not just around the infrastructure team. Five years ago, it was your infrastructure and you chose where your application was housed.

Those lines can now be blurred if they’re not explicitly laid out.”

An area where the channel can significantly benefit customers in the transition to a perimeter-less environment is in providing the deep consultancy conversations, and helping those organisations broaden their understanding of how security can be approached, Zirilio COO, Ryan Mistry, said.

“We spend a lot of time simply having conversations within the IT and security rooms about having the broader conversation with the organisation,” he said. “The best potential is to get into the CFO’s office and explain the broader impact to the brand and the organisation.”

But having those broader conversations can be a challenge for IT teams and their technology partners, Insentra CEO, Ronnie Altit, said. The challenge is that IT still has a fundamental lack of understanding on how to engage with the highest level of the organisation, the board.

Unfortunately, for security to be effective in modern practice, it needs to be driven from the top down, so IT needs to understand how to get the board’s buy-in.

Symantec Roundtable

“Boards don’t even understand the concept of the cloud,” Altit said.

“They have not got their head around security yet, let alone cloud, and now we’re asking them to get their head around cloud and security, and the difference in security and the cloud.

“The reality is that the boards don’t care. What the boards concern themselves with are other factors in terms of what they need to deliver to their clients and their shareholders.

“But we can sit here and get stuck into trying to have that IT discussion.

For years the industry has been having the wrong discussions and it’s time to ask boards what they actually care about.”

Brennan IT practice director of communications and cloud at Brennan IT, Lyncoln de Mello, agreed that boards aren’t overly interested in the specifics of security. And even when the board is across the security and the cloud conversation, its goals rest elsewhere.

“It’s around the device, the access to data, the management of people’s credentials and the various proliferations of Shadow IT,” he said.

“In our last couple of years of trading, there has been a reduced focus on concerns about moving from one permanent cloud.”

InfoTrust CEO, Dane Meah, said talking about product, no matter how innovative, isn’t a successful approach.

“We’re at the point where if you’re walking in to meet with senior executives outside of technology, even if it’s to solve a sole specific problem, everybody has already talked to them about the perfect product for the problem, and you aren’t particularly welcome.

“The better approach is to remove the noise and put the problem in context, talk about business risk, and then talk about more broad, holistic approaches to mitigating risk among the business.”

According to Security Centric principal consultant, Sash Vasilevski, the holy grail for the channel when

talking to boards is being able to show how security solutions can open up new business opportunities.

“The biggest success we’ve had in the last 18 months is when it’s driven from the board, and it’s an identification of a business opportunity and not an avoidance of risk. It’s in being able to show how the solution will either open up markets the company couldn’t previously play in or differentiate it from its competitors.”

Succeeding by adding value

L-R: Josh Watts (Harbour IT); Dane Meah (InfoTrust); John Ferlito (AC3)

Despite the challenges of adequately engaging with customers, and defining the responsibilities around security, the consensus at the table was that it’s a good time to be in the channel in security – and, in particular, cloud security. The secret to success is finding the differentiator that allows you to add value.

“The MSPs are absolutely the only organisations that are in the best place to be able to sell the ongoing services of security, and they just need a little bit of assistance depending on their client’s particular needs,” Arrow ECS’ Verykios said.

“Whether they are in medical or

23

manufacturing or something like that, tailoring the solution to the client and vertical is important. If the reseller is truly an integrator they can provide the MSP with a lot of expertise in this area.”

From the MSP perspective, there was also the acknowledgement that there are opportunities to work more closely with other parts of the channel to better deliver solutions and security to customers.

“There’s an opportunity to stretch the relationships with these point security providers because there’s a lot of stuff, as an MSP, that we aren’t doing that we should be doing,” TechSpecialist CEO, Dushern Pather, said.

“That’s not to say our environment is insecure. It isn’t. But there’s stuff we could be doing that’s next gen. For example, securing applications and providing consulting around things that are not within our boundary.”

According to Core Technology Partners’ Nixon, the evolving needs around security is driving new opportunities to find competitive differentiation and value-add, for those channel players that have an understanding of the customer.

“We’ve got a range of tools that cut

arnnet.com.au Q2 2019

24 Roundtable Symantec

down network or security assessments that would normally take four or five days to three or four hours. That’s a value add. We’ve changed our model so that now we go to market and provide certain assessments for free to our clients, and those assessments result in engineering talk. It’s that talk that has become what customers see as the difference between us and other companies that are focused purely on implementation.

“The goal is to focus that conversation around the cloud strategy the client has adopted, and how it should also review the associated business risks. It’s our responsibility to give a risk assessment and say to our customers, on a score of one to 100, this where you sit.

It also protects us because if in three months there’s a breach or incident, we can say the client didn’t adopt that recommendation and that was their choice.”

Finding the right products

The modern security solution, designed to handle the perimeter-less environment, needs to look at security from three angles, Sense of Security business development manager, Rickey Gilotra, said.

“Securing all three sides involves configuring, trying to block it from unauthorised access, and then accounting for ‘pretending’ to be somebody with authorisation after getting access credentials they shouldn’t have – in other words, making sure you have proper IP listing and other controls.”

Achieving this requires a solution made of combination of technologies, rather than one from a single vendor. As such, the distributor is a critical piece in the development of a perimeter-free security solution.

Harbour IT COO, Josh Watts, said the channel is increasingly relying on the distributor to provide additional expertise and resourcing in helping to secure a customer’s environment.

Q2 019 arnnet.com.au

Watts said that the channel is looking to distributors to be selective in who they represent in the market, and focus on having a deeper level of engagement with those vendors.

“So it’s not just a logistics exercise.

The best distributors are the ones that understand the technology and the relationships with the vendors.”

Zirilio’s Mistry said the distributors the company works with are those that can provide a rapidly-growing business with critical support around training and expertise that it would otherwise struggle to access independently.

“There’s only 17 of us in the group, so we look to the disties to provide that level of training and expertise that we struggle to find the time to organise ourselves. We’re constantly running out of time and double hatting. That’s running through my mind when working through initial arrangements with partners,” he said.

Being able to find the right vendors to represent and distributors to partner with remains the biggest concern for channel organisations across the chain. According to Insentra’s Altit, the dynamic security environment means that it’s important to keep an eye out for a broad range of solutions.

“One of the things that we pride ourselves on is not selling tier one and tier two products,” Altit said. “What we have seen is the value of the new vendors or relatively new vendors that have awesome tech and have invested heavily in the US. “They want to come to market here but they are too small for traditional distribution. There are opportunities here to have a form of exclusivity with really cool technology.”

Regardless of the technology involved, or the structure of the partnerships, one thing’s for certain – the security go-to-market strategies that will be succeed are those founded on a spirit of mutual co-operation and accountability, Solista’s Allnutt said.

“There’s a lot of great technology in the marketplace, so what makes them

Ronnie Altit (Insentra)

“The best distributors are the ones that understand the technology and the relationships with the vendors.” successful locally is the support and the people you’re in the trenches with.

“Having that kind of shared accountability is important, because the landscape is changing, completely.

For example, historically you went in and had a technology discussion around IT, how to secure the data and where that data lives. But that conversation is broadening. Now we’re looking at how we can lock down Internet of Things [IoT] devices – for example, how healthcare can lock down health devices.

“If you can’t have that broader conversation then you’re going to lose credibility at the business level, which is everything,” Allnutt said.

This roundtable was in association with Symantec and Arrow ECS ANZ. Photos by Christine Wong.

30 under 30 Tech Awards 2019 The inaugural ARN 30 Under 30 Tech Awards were launched at the 2019 Emerging Leaders Forum.

These awards recognise young talent in the Australian tech industry across technical, sales, marketing, management, human resources and entrepreneur categories.

ARN congratulates all winners and finalists and thanks all organisations and individuals for submitting their nominations in 2019.

26 30 Under 30 Tech Awards Entrepreneur

ENTREPRENEUR

Brendan Dunne Managing Director BDC Services

“ The ARN 30 under 30 entrepreneur award is a testament to the strong channel support we have received. I am proud to be named in the 30 Under 30.”

Career growth

Contributions to success

When Brendan Dunne started out as an internal sales representative, he was confronted with a business with low profit margins, high costs structures and a management reluctant to invest additional capital in the business. He made a number of operational improvements including improving financial management, logistics, sales, workflow, and job cost management. In late 2017, he branched out and started his own company, BDC Services – offering a vast array of technology to solve complex IT infrastructure, electrical, cooling, AV, data cabling, access control, and fire suppression requirements.

As a business owner, achieving financial stability is an important consideration for the business.

By the end of 2018, BDC Services reached more than $1 million in revenue – a great achievement for a start-up run and staffed by a young team of under-30 year olds.

Beyond financial success, Dunne said, “another way to measure business success is achieving efficiencies at all levels”. For example, efficiencies for the customer means ensuring clear, effective and value-add solutions that meet and are delivered to their expectations. Internal efficiencies for the business could mean reduction of duplication (data and processes) and reducing room for error. This allows the business to scale with more business opportunities. In both cases, efficiencies help reduce risks which ultimately represents success to Dunne.

“Leadership to Dunne is about ‘being a listener, being bold and acting in the service of others’.”

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

Path to leadership Leadership to Dunne is about “being a listener, being bold and acting in the service of others”. He has been

described as having a consistent drive for continuous improvement personally and professionally.

He strives to innovate and has built strong relationships with his peers.

Future goals While the IT industry typically focuses on providing discrete solutions to customers such as managed services or IT security, BDC Services aims to provide IT solutions across all business needs, IT facilities, marketing, operations and the front office.

Over the next 12 months, Dunne will look to increase sales and possible solutions per customer, and be the ‘go to’ for all IT solutions.

He plans to achieve this by using existing sales channels as a pipeline for other business verticals. He also will continue to innovate – grow with new key vendor relationships such as HP, Dell, Cisco, Lenovo. He says this approach will enable the business to remain broad in its products portfolio while developing deeper and stronger capabilities and focusing on strategic alliances and accredited partnerships.

Entrepreneur 30 Under 30 Tech Awards

27

Career growth

Contributions to success

Since starting in IT five years ago, Callum McDonald has been instrumental in turning around and expanding what was a struggling business in City Software. He took over the business less than 3 years ago and in a short space of time developed a comprehensive offering to his clients.

McDonald recently won a large storage installation with the Arts Centre of Victoria which was a breakthrough considering in the past there was a large focus on transactional business.

He also counts San Miguel as another significant storage win to add to his achievements.

McDonald loves to see his clients happy. He doesn’t spare anything assisting them to get to that point.

If his customers are happy then he sees himself as playing his role in the industry, being a leader,and acting with the clients’ best interests at heart.

runs on the board - McDonald will continue to expand his capabilities.

Colleagues claim McDonald has a servant’s heart in looking for ways outside of business to make the world a better place through his contribution to charity and donating his time to people who are less fortunate.

Path to leadership

Future goals

At 25, McDonald helped a struggling business turnaround and grow into something bigger. With further experience and shifting his focus to empowering those around him he will continue to grow into an even better leader. His values are very clear and he already has an understanding of who he is as a person. With more time and

McDonald plans to continue to expand his business and the team around him. He has ambitions to establish a datacentre. With the team, he aims to expand both domestically and abroad. McDonald confidently forecasts to having a $7-8 million dollar business in the next 12 months.

Professional qualities McDonald has demonstrated initiative in looking outside for external support in finding a mentor. In terms of leadership, he believes “this is significant considering most mid20-year-olds are still trying to figure things out”. Through mentoring and continually looking for ways to improve himself and those around him, McDonald has built a strong business and reputation for leadership.

ENTREPRENEUR

Callum McDonald Managing Director CSW-IT

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

28 30 Under 30 Tech Awards Entrepreneur

ENTREPRENEUR

Ilia Vince Founder and Team Leader Qubasoft

“I was humbled and grateful to hear my name when the category winners were announced.”

Career growth

Contributions to success

Future goals

Technology has been a lifelong passion for Ilia Vince. At the age of 17, he started his own Web development company and when he was 25 years old, he opened his first software company, Creative WEB. His latest creation is Qubasoft, a software company that helps launch startups and improve existing businesses.

Since launching, the company has worked with startup, enterprise and government clients. The apps developed by Qubasoft have generated millions of user sessions, with multiple apps hitting the top charts.

Vince said as he developed both personally and financially, “the why behind my actions had changed”.

At first, he was motivated by changing his personal situation and creating a lifestyle where he didn’t need to work for another company. Once those goals were achieved, it became about the impact Vince was able to make on other people’s lives.

That is one of the reasons why he has chosen software as his vehicle. A quality app can bring value to masses, or completely transform an organisation.

Professional qualities Vince has used a unique approach in launching his software company.

Instead of marketing app development services to the public, Vince’s team has developed and published a number of apps. These apps have generated over 5 million user sessions and 13 million ad impressions.

Path to leadership

Vince wants Qubasoft to continue growing, importantly to impact more people in a positive way. The staff at Qubasoft are professional and reliable. Many of its clients have developed a bond with the developers whom they’ve worked with over a number of years.

The business is systemised when it comes to sales and exposure. His main marketing tool is the company website which drives traffic through multiple channels such as paid and organic search; social media; referral websites; and email marketing.

Vince has a personal following of over 100,000 people across social media.

At this point, there’s no strong focus to monetise his personal audience, however, he does receive a portion of the company’s leads through these channels as well.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

Vince has had the advantage of starting out in the industry very young and learning a lot from Creative WEB. He learned how to manage development teams, launch products, drive traffic, and convert visitors into sales. He has also gained skills around hiring personnel, managing funds, and systemising a business to run efficiently. This experience has played a fundamental role in Qubasoft’s results and will continue to drive future growth and innovation.

Vince is endorsed for having strong skills in project management; online marketing; and business strategy.

Experience LA like never before.

Ingram Micro is delighted to bring you on an exclusive trip to Los Angeles that includes Premium economy flights and transfers, luxury accommodation in Hollywood, a Porsche race track driving experience, dinners, night clubs, limousine transfers to LA’s biggest music awards, the official after party and more!

Co-Host Sponsors Each of our Co-Host Vendor Sponsors are giving away multiple tickets for this once in a lifetime event, visit IngramLA.com.au to register your interest.

Register now at ingramLA.com.au VIP Wildcard Sponsors *Standard Terms and Conditions apply. For full terms and conditions, please visit ingramla.com.au. NSW LTPS/19/32527 ACT TP19/02850 SA T19/301. ŠCopyright 2019 Ingram Micro Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. For more information visit au.ingrammicro.com or call 1300 651 124. M-036191.12

Additional tickets available from our Wildcard sponsors who also allow entry into one of 12 $1000 cash (credit card) prizes.

30 30 Under 30 Tech Awards Management

MANAGEMENT

Amy Reynolds Executive Manager, Solution and Governance APCD

Career growth Amy Reynolds’ career began 12 years ago as a junior. Since then she has worked as a senior project manager on the 2013 DIBP National Transformation Program and as program manager to the 2014-2015 Downer Group Transformation Project. She was also the first woman under the age of 40 to become an executive at APCD.

“I hope to leverage this experience to further share my learnings with other aspiring industry leaders.”

Professional qualities

Contributions to success

Reynolds regularly presents APCD’s deployment methodology and device-as-a-service model to global IT service providers and their customers in an effort to reinvent the way organisations manage their technology. She is a strong advocate for continuous improvement and change within the business. Her determination has led to her to develop a young delivery team into a corporate project management office in its own right. She has helped APCD service coverage grow to include a managed field services team, call management, a dedicated recruitment arm, and three additional facilities in Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane.

Reynolds says, “Success is measured in many ways but aligns with waking up every day genuinely knowing you enjoy life”. She was a successful student at school and expected to be successful in completing a doctorate, finding a cure for cancer and changing the world. Shockingly, midway through her medical degree Reynolds realised she wasn’t truly passionate about becoming a doctor. Reynolds said knowing she is the best version of herself at this time in her life is what motivates her and keeps her passionate about what she does.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

Path to leadership Leadership is not for the young to strive to, said Reynolds. For her leadership is an innate quality

that is present in people who have passion and influence and driving improvements in what they do. It also drives her future goals for her team, business and the industry.

Future goals Reynolds plans to grow her team by 20 per cent, taking her staff headcount to 200. She will continue to grow the West Australian-based facility that opened in November 2018. It is already working on several government and healthcare projects. She will also start to plan the company’s expansion into Queensland. Reynolds will also continue mentoring three exceptional team member to help grow them into junior management roles.

Management 30 Under 30 Tech Awards

31

MANAGEMENT

Jason Duerden Country Manager ANZ BlackBerry Cylance Career growth

“The ARN 30 Under 30 Awards are a great opportunity to showcase the skills and achievements of Australia’s nextgeneration of talent in such a positive and exciting forum.”

Contributions to success Duerden believes success stems from the team, and building a business requires the right people and the right culture. He said it is vital to attract – and retain –the right talent and encourage that talent to have a challenger mentality. Tightly knit and successful teams drive market awareness, relevance, and adoption of new technologies. This is what his team does every day. Ultimately, success to Duerden is the ability to lead and empower a team to achieve both business and personal goals. When a team is inspired and supported by its management, it can perform better, and succeed together.

Path to leadership Empathy, realism, and qualityare the three key values Duerden holds in relation to leadership. Great leaders are able to relate to their teams and provide realistic guidance and measures

to achieve high quality outcomes.

Duerden believes if a team member feels understood and listened to, then they can contribute to business strategy and even challenge the status quo. Leaders do not know everything, nor should they decide everything. Leaders create an environment to gather what is required from multiple sources and ultimately deliver success.

Future goals In the next 12 months, Duerden aims to double BlackBerry Cylance’s local business and headcount. Leading BlackBerry Cylance in A/NZ, he aims to build the business into the company’s number one performing region globally – and that starts with team culture. He will continue to hold true to the company’s philosophy, which means customers and partners enjoy doing business and dealing with BlackBerry Cylance.

Jason Duerden studied Web and creative design before completing tertiary studies in business and leadership. This opened opportunities for him to enter the IT industry in a sales representative role. In 2017, he was appointed to lead enterprise account management in the channel as head of channels for ANZ at Cylance, a leading AI-driven security provider that was recently acquired by BlackBerry.

In December 2017, he was promoted to his current role as country manager for ANZ at BlackBerry Cylance, where he is responsible for leading the local business strategy for a hyper-growth security company and managing more than 10 staff in the ANZ region. In 2018 he was a finalist for Personal Innovation - Management Excellence in the ARN Innovation Awards.

Professional qualities Blackcherry Duerden’s first order of business was to overhaul the channel strategy for Australia and New Zealand.

Moving into the executive leadership position, he identified that ANZ represented an exciting opportunity that could offer many benefits to the company, making it a key investment priority. During his time he has initiated a three-year investment plan which has already taken the team from two to 10 staff in the region. Duerden implements a hands-on management strategy and leads by example, maintaining close personal relationships with partners and heavy involvement in customer activity.

Duerden said, “It is an exciting time to be at the helm of such an expansion in the region, and the plan is to maintain this exponential growth”.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

32 30 Under 30 Tech Awards Management

MANAGEMENT

Tayler Feigl Channel Development Manager Datto

“ It is awesome to see ARN and the industry generally recognise emerging talent in the tech space.”

Career growth Following university, Tayler Feigl moved to Hong Kong and worked for a startup, PassKit. She began in a customer success role and transitioned to a dual role focusing on customer success and business development.

Moving back to Sydney, Feigl joined Datto as the company’s first APAC partner success manager. In the role Feigl increased partner training and onboarding rates to 90 per cent and was promoted to Partner Success team leader. Shortly after, she transitioned to Datto APAC’s first channel development manager role.

Professional qualities With one of the highest ROIs on the marketing development fund budget globally, Feigl has helped to customise the A/NZ roadshow. This includes MSP-specific breakout sessions where partners have the opportunity to be educated on lead generation, closing deals, managing social media, running a successful event, or building leaders within the organisation. She has also forged new vendor relationships in A/NZ. Feigl is currently looking at building out a cold calling service to help MSPs book new business meetings.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

Contributions to success Core to Feigl’s set goals is the integration of her work and personal life. She aims to build meaningful and lasting relationships with Datto partners and the Datto Team – all the while having the flexibility to work from anywhere, with autonomy. She believes success also comes from taking on new challenges and pushing herself outside of her comfort zone.

For Feigl this includes focusing efforts on creating a large and vibrant Datto community across Asia-Pacific, and actively advocating for more women to consider jobs in the IT channel and industry at large.

Path to leadership Feigl is a future leader because she has complete confidence in her ideas and decisions, which are based on looking at data, garnering feedback from peers and hearing every perspective possible. She accepts that not every decision will be a huge success but says taking educated risks and failing

leads to personal and professional growth. She is opportunity-driven and optimistic in the way she works. Feigl doesn’t hesitate in pushing boundaries and facing challenges head on. She is always ready to learn and genuinely believes everything can be improved.

Feigl believes teamwork makes the dream work.

Future goals Over the next 12 months, Feigl will focus more of her time in Asia. She is passionate about growing the community in Asia and will dedicate more time strategy and execution in those countries. She plans to align herself closely with Datto’s Singapore team and work directly with the partner base in South-East Asia. Feigl also plans to do more for women in technology through speaking opportunities and working to motivate and empower other young women to take hold of everything IT has to offer.

Management 30 Under 30 Tech Awards

33

Contributions to success Guerin likes to try new things and pushing her own limits. She believes success comes from having the freedom to make her own decisions and mistakes, and to learn from them – then apply what she has learnt to her job and bring that information to her colleagues. Guerin “enjoys growing and pushing the boundaries of what is possible”. Now that she has been given more senior roles at NEXTGEN, she enjoys being a part of helping others succeed and add value: “The success of the team, vendors and partners is paramount to being super successful”.

Path to leadership

MANAGEMENT

Lorna Guerin Vendor Manager NEXTGEN

Career growth

Professional qualities

In 2013, Lorna Guerin started with SAP Ireland at its global support centre. During her time there she led a transformational project to improve internal support workflows which was rolled out globally to about 1000 SAP employees. In 2016, she relocated to Australia and joined NEXTGEN as annuity and renewals specialist. She grew the renewals business to about 25 per cent of total revenue, setting up sophisticated processes and reporting which are still used by NEXTGEN today.

Guerin has developed and implemented an annuity and renewals program and system at NEXTGEN, increasing renewals by about 400 per cent. She has been an integral part of successfully onboarding six new vendors to the NEXTGEN portfolio, including developing and executing channel plans. She has grown the partner base by 80 per cent through proactive presentations, meetings, conferences and attending industry events. Guerin also acts as a key point of information and advice for employees in A/NZ.

Guerin provides an innovative approach to problem solving. She sets the vision but then ensures that she takes people with her on the journey. She has an ability to see the bigger picture. Guerin likes to approach problems and situations with a rational and clear head. She has become a source of counsel for vendors, partners and colleagues.

Her positive attitude, allows her to work with a glass half full approach.

She also has the ability to ask for help to drive success for the team.

Future goals In the near future, Guerin aspires to manage a larger portfolio of $20 million. Her solution selling portfolios will help to drive business outcomes.

She wants to increase her industry speaking engagements and plans to lead, mentor and manage a broader team. She intends to mentor young women in STEM initiatives and drive corporate involvement from NEXTGEN.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

34 30 Under 30 Tech Awards Management

MANAGEMENT

Chris Demery Technical Services Manager Seccom Global

Career growth After completing his Bachelor of Business Information Systems at ACU, Chris Demery joined Seccom Global as a security engineer in 2010. He left the security firm in 2014 and worked for both Westpac and NAB, managing several major projects for both banks.

He returned to Seccom in 2016 to take on the position of Technical Services Manager. He currently manages the delivery of all professional services, projects and internal network security.

Demery leads the technical team and forms part of the management group that oversees research and development, product onboarding and internal strategy and security.

Professional qualities Demery is passionate about improving the business and has introduced a bunch of new initiatives since taking on the role. They include: a complete overhaul of internal systems – including rebuilding the core infrastructure; the introduction of processes to ensure improved compliance; regular internal auditing; and security best practices. He has also created a different approach to team knowledge sharing and collaboration by introducing Tech Fridays – an afternoon session each Friday where technical and non-technical knowledge can be shared, including items such as documentation and customer service skills.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

Contributions to success Doing what he loves and feeling fulfilled by meeting the goals he has set himself and the business is vital to Demery. By doing this, he ensures the job doesn’t become becoming a chore. He said, “The work that you are doing finds real meaning”. Demery likes to mentor people in his team and help them achieve their own goals by passing on the knowledge and wisdom that others have passed on to him.

Demery said having the opportunity to see his colleagues and indirectly the business grow as a result is the ultimate definition of success.

Path to leadership Demery said an important aspect of any leader is the ability to understand each piece of the puzzle that makes

up an organisation, where it fits, how it integrates and interacts with the rest of the other pieces. He is driven to achieve personal goals and make a difference to the business and customers, and is passionate about helping other people find success.

Future goals With the help of management, Demery has begun to map out a plan for the next 12 months. He sees himself retaining his current role with Seccom Global, but taking on more responsibilities and managing a much larger team. The improved efficiencies would then allow him to take further tenure of the management and operations of all IT within the organisation while not affecting his ability to remain available to his team.

PERTH

MELBOURNE

SYDNEY

BRISBANE

6t h Augus t

1 3 th Au gust

22n d Aug u st

27th Au g ust

36 30 Under 30 Tech Awards Marketing

MARKETING

Matthew Kusi-Appauh General Manager Marketing and Strategy Aussie Broadband

Career growth

Professional qualities

Path to leadership

Matthew Kusi-Appauh started his career in 2011 as a management cadet at the University of Wollongong.

During the next four years, he studied part-time while working in different areas of the university.

In 2016, he moved to Victoria to take on the role of marketing and corporate strategy manager at Aussie Broadband. The service provider, at the time, was looking to expand nationally, but had no marketing team or strategy in place.

Kusi-Appauh led the development of a new Aussie Broadband brand, built a marketing team, and developed a national marketing strategy from the ground up.

With a willingness to explore alternate means of effectively marketing a small company against bigger competitors with bigger budgets, Kusi-Appauh aims to incorporate great ideas into the company’s campaigns. Aussie Broadband’s “Can’t Beat Feedback” campaign which uses real feedback as its core marketing message, came from the company’s design team. He takes the initiative on many fronts within the organisation to improve systems and processes. Kusi-Appauh has scoped and led projects to implement an internally-built lead system, developed an online signup process, developed new products, all projects that have had a significant impact on marketing and sales performance.

He actively empowers his staff to be the operational decision-makers in their areas of responsibility, enabling them to lead the way in some areas of the marketing strategy such as direct mail, broadcast and digital marketing.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

Future goals Kusi-Appauh is growing his leadership skills so he can drive further growth into Aussie Broadband. He aims to travel and work internationally to gain a broader range of experience. His ambitions is to become a corporate leader in the not-for-profit sector by the time he is 40.

“Kusi-Appauh led the development of a new brand, built a marketing team, and developed a national marketing strategy from the ground up.”

Marketing 30 Under 30 Tech Awards

37

Career growth

Professional qualities

Contributions to success

Nathan Matthews’ career began at university with an advertising internship at Yahoo7. His first fulltime job was a marketing executive at LinkedIn, during which time he also continued full time studies.

During his two years at LinkedIn, Matthews organised campaigns and large vertically-focused events for various industries including technology, finance and education.

He won LinkedIn’s Marketing Award for his work on the Tech Connect customer facing event and helped launch LinkedIn’s Agency Influencer Program which is still operating today.

In 2016, Nathan joined HP providing marketing support to the Commercial Channel Sales Team and their managed partner business. His key achievements in this role include co-founding and executing one of HP’s largest partner and customer events in the South Pacific – HP Evolution.

In the past three years, HP Evolution has grown to be one of the industry’s premier events, with more than 1000 partners and enterprise customers attending the two-day conference.

Matthews is known for bringing fresh ideas to marketing and to its large established channel business.

He has a pivotal role, sitting on the HP Channel Management Team, and regularly draws from his university study and experience at a tech start-up to bring new approaches to events, marketing campaigns and customer communication. This enables stronger customer focus and outcomes.

He always keeps in mind the return on marketing investment, both for HP and its channel partners, especially with programs that have made an impact on their businesses. Another example of this is how Matthews transformed HP’s annual partner awards night to become one of the highlights of the technology industry each year – a celebration of crosschannel teamwork and customer service excellence. Through his strategic approach, imaginative ideas and flawless execution, he has raised the bar for events in the industry.

Matthews attributes success to the impact that he has on those around him. He is a strong believer in the power of a team. Within the HP channel organisation, Matthews is a trusted advisor to the management team, providing insight and guidance on current and upcoming projects.

Path to leadership Matthews is described as “an incredible people person, who has developed strong relationships across HP’s business globally as well as throughout our channel network”.

Matthews sits across both the Printing and Personal Systems businesses and regularly draws these teams together to achieve outcomes that may not have been reached, if not working together.

He also takes the time to listen and understand his peers’ opinions and offers constructive feedback where needed to achieve higher outcomes. .

Future goals

Matthews aims to further cement HP as thought leaders within the technology industry, not only for its partners but also its competitors.

MARKETING

Nathan Matthews Channel Marketing Manager HP

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

38 30 Under 30 Tech Awards Marketing

Contributions to success Career growth Since entering the IT space four years ago, Sharlie Raymond’s career trajectory has soared. Originally hired as a project manager at Outcomex, Raymond showed initiative in other areas of the business. This led to her being promoted within her first year to Alliances and Marketing Manager.

Raymond set up Outcomex’s marketing department, which she now manages nationally, with employees in NSW, Victoria and Adelaide.

Her first goal was to lead the rebranding of the company from Uplinx Group to Outcomex.

Simultaneously, she headed up the marketing department, to increase Outcomex’s brand awareness.

Raymond manages 90 per cent of all Outcomex’s vendor alliances, developing new partnerships, taking

ownership of vendor programs, and orchestrating engineering training and certifications. She is seen as a key member in Outcomex’s future growth.

Professional qualities Raymond’s rapid success at Outcomex has been due to her ability to look beyond the boundaries of her title.

In the past two years, she has shown initiative in supporting HR by creating an onboarding presentation for new employees. She has also organised team building events.

Raymond has played a significant role in new developments at Outcomex from its managed services customer portal to various IoT solution modules.

In collaboration with the software engineering department, she created a custom intranet that is used for internal and customer facing purposes.

“Raymond is seen as a key member in Outcomex’s future growth.”

For Raymond, having a positive impact within the organisation and on the people she works with, means making a difference and adding value.

Raymond hopes to be able to contribute to the industry as a whole by promoting diversity in IT and, most importantly, STEM to younger girls.

Path to leadership Raymond focuses on the key attributes of integrity, leadership and business acumen in all her work. And she continuously demonstrates her commitment to excellence by going beyond what is expected for all company initiatives.

Future goals Having developed a deep knowledge of different areas of the business, Raymond has a long career ahead at Outcomex. Next year, Raymond will be promoted from manager to a director. She will focus on improving her management skills, especially in regards to managing remote teams, by increasing her interstate collaborations. She also hopes to join a mentorship program for women in IT to discuss mutual challenges.

MARKETING

Sharlie Raymond Alliances and Marketing Manager Outcomex

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

Marketing 30 Under 30 Tech Awards

Career growth Kathleen Grahame started her channel career by joining Ingram Micro as a marketing executive.

She directed partner and services marketing for the software licensing portfolio, which involved working with 30 vendors.

She then moved to StorageCraft as channel marketing manager (APAC) in 2016. Her key achievements include creating most of the company’s channel content which was replicated in EMEA and the US, developing the All Stars Program (an incentive-based program to reactivate dormant partners and target accounts tagged for hypergrowth), developing a marketing microsite for partners that was incorporated into the global StorageCraft partner program, and onboarding four distributors in Asia-Pacific whilst expanding the business into emerging countries in South-East Asia.

In 2018, Grahame joined Sophos as senior manager, field and channel marketing A/NZ. In less than nine months, she has spearheaded an MSP recruitment campaign, and helped develop MSP case studies and cross-sell/up-sell campaigns.

Towards the end of 2018, Grahame was appointed into the Global MSP Marketing team where she executed Sophos-led events to deliver cyberthreats and privacy legislation education to SMBs.

Professional qualities Grahame is known for using a variety of methods to drive Sophos’ MSP recruitment, engagement and growth.

They include heavy engagement with user groups; a clear focus on vendor and tech alliances; strategic account management; hypergrowth incentives; and recruitment events.

Grahame helped drive Sophos’ pivot towards a stronger digital marketing focus with an “always on” approach to digital marketing, andmulti-touch lead generation.

39

Her initiatives have helped Sophos pass 2000 fully-qualified sales leads directly to its partners with a close rate of 18.75 per cent.

Recently, Grahame launched the Break a Hackers Heart Roadshow, which includes thought leadership content for partners. The event featured live hacks and demos showing what hackers can do in three hours.

MARKETING

Kathleen Grahame Marketing Manager Sophos Contributions to success Grahame defines success as an amalgamation of a healthy attitude, a growth mindset and overall happiness – and it is not defined by money. Grahame says having a positive impact on others is a defining factor for success: “I no longer define success exclusively by my career accomplishments.”

She views success as multi-faceted, integrating achievements in all aspects of her life such as personal, professional, community and family.

Path to leadership Grahame is described as “an intelligent, creative and results-driven

marketer”. In her relatively short career she has demonstrated a flare for developing and driving marketing campaigns that increase awareness and boost sales. Grahame also “has empathy for others, authenticity, enthusiasm and energy that draw people to her, making her a natural leader”.

Future goals Grahame’s ambitions for the next 12 months include a transition to an Asia-Pacific-level role. This would see her become more involved in channel strategy across the region, including rolling out regional campaigns.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

40 30 Under 30 Tech Awards Marketing

MARKETING

Matthew Wu Consumer, PR Media Manager Telstra

“ This is one of most exciting times to work in this industry as innovation interconnects and overlaps so much of the business and consumer world.”

Contributions to success Career growth Matthew Wu has worked in a variety of roles since joining the technology industry 10 years ago. He began his career as a Technical Marketing Specialist at ASUS Computers. While working on his Master’s Degree in Communications, he freelanced as a writer for a number of technology and games publications.

Wu joined Telstra in 2013, after a stint as technical product and gaming PR manager. He was promoted to Consumer PR Media Manager in 2018.

Professional qualities At Telstra, Wu has initiated a new way of operating in respect to media relations. He has created procedures to increase transparency, and to promote hard work and successes to leadership.

Not shy in thinking outside the box, Wu has expanded the media landscape Telstra would normally target for news stories.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

Wu subscribes to the Japanese concept of Ikigai which is “the reason for existing and involves where four concepts intersect like a Venn diagram”. The philosophy asks: What are you good at? What do you love?

What does the world need; What can you get paid for?

Path to leadership Having worked exclusively in technology communications over the past 10 years - across startup through to enterprise corporate organisations - Wu has developed a keen understanding of management.

He understands the importance of clients, media, external stakeholders, direct reports, P&L, business development, and, of course, what makes a good public relations campaign.

Over the last 10 years, Wu has developed a strong global professional network. He has also represented several brands, telling their stories, and winning many awards for doing

so. He believes in the next 10 years of his professional life, he will be able to leverage many of these connections and learnings to become a leader in the PR and business industry.

Future goals During his time at Telstra, Wu has taken on additional roles and responsibilities within the communications function. He believes Telstra is moving towards becoming an agile organisation and he has begun introducing processes and agile methodologies to his colleagues.

One day he would like to run PR and communications for a rising startup. Wu wants to be able to combine his startup and corporate PR experience to lead communications for and up-and-coming brand.

He believes the current state of startups in Australia is an exciting and busy environment in which there are a lot of good stories to tell.

Wu said that personally he wants to “be where I am right now but 15 per cent happier”.

TEAM UP WITH

CyberPower!

Your Professional Power Management Solution Provider CyberPower is a Global Tier 1 UPS/Power protection brand with self-owned manufacturing facilities. We pride ourselves on the quality and reliability of our products and we maintain these excellent standards globally.

With dedicated R&D personnel and unparalleled engineering excellence, CyberPower is a leading power protection and UPS manufacturer offering UPS systems from 600VA – 600KVA, Power Distribution Units, Surge Protectors and Power Management Software.

Why Partner with CyberPower?

• • • • • •

We offer best-in-class solutions ranging from single phase through to three phase solutions.

We offer on-site power reviews * - so you know when your equipment requires upgrading.

We provide free power management software on all of our UPS units Our base warranties are advanced replacement and we cover the courier fees both ways.

Our Smart Partner Rebate Program is world class. Earn rebate for selling CyberPower every quarter.

Global leader in “Green IT” practices which makes us the UPS vendor of choice for ICT Government procurements.

*within 50km of the CBD of each Australian State.

To learn more, please visit www.cyberpower.com or our Partner Program at https://partner.cyberpower.com

CyberPower Partner

https://partner.cyberpower.com

www.cyberpower.com 1300-431-808 (Australia Wide) au.sales@cyberpower.com Copyright © 2019 Cyber Power Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

WWW.CYBERPOWER.COM

42 30 Under 30 Tech Awards Human Resources

HUMAN

RESOURCES

Cara Perks HR/Recruitment Araza

Contributions to success Success is making a great and lasting impression for her candidates, her team and clients. Cara Perks doesn’t like to focus on success as an end point, but believes being positive, innovative and transparent in work will naturally lead to success.

Path to leadership Perks said she had been lucky to work with people who make great leaders and who have highlighted to her what makes a leader – qualities such as being passionate, innovative, and constantly growing. Working with others has allowed Perks to strive towards a common goal by contributing her skills and learning from her fellow employees’ strengths and perspectives.

She believes this is essential to building positive relationships and new skills, and seeing problems from different perspectives to achieve goals.

Future goals Perks sees herself in a recruitment manager position, having already started to build and mentor a team of collaborative recruiters. She would also like to build upon her current consultant base by bringing on 150 new team members over the next year.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

Career growth

Professional qualities

Perks started her career at Apple as a specialist, and was quickly promoted to genius administrator, then became a preservations and operations specialist.

When Perks transitioned into human resources, her customer service experience stakeholder engagement skills were invaluable in helping her to build relationships with new clients.

During her time at Araza, Perks has enjoyed identifying improvement opportunities, comparing alternative solutions and trying new processes and strategies, to achieve the best outcomes for Araza, the team and potential candidates.

She has introduced daily stand ups for the recruitment team. Perks feels sharing goals, updates, and information is invaluable.

Molly Rowe Community Manager Vibrato Career growth

Contributions to success

Molly Rowe started her career as an HR intern at IBM in 2014. She created large scale automation improvements to existing processes.

Rowe improved the positive outcome for employees in their internal role transitions and introduced reporting elements for IBM’s APAC Global Business Services unit.

As the Community Manager for Vibrato, she is responsible for the strategy and execution of Vibrato’s people and culture and recruitment divisions.

Rowe views success as an equal opportunity for everybody around her to thrive. Success is having the capability to lift those around her and help them not only identify their strengths but also grow and learn from mistakes.

Professional qualities Rowe’s role at Vibrato involves significant leadership responsibilities.

She is part of the internal leadership circle that makes the strategic directional decisions for the business.

She is dedicated to innovation and is determined not to rest on her laurels.

Path to leadership Making sure she represents her values, Rowe leads by example and is conscious of the effect that her actions have on others. She paves the way for those around her by empowering them to articulate and achieve their goals.

Future goals Rowe sees herself progressing to a head of community role. This will happen through the hiring and acquisition of additional support roles to handle the everyday tasks, allowing Rowe to focus on the strategic goals of Vibrato..

44 30 Under 30 Tech Awards Tech

TECH

Raymond Lie Technical Cybersecurity Consultant Dimension Data

Contributions to success

Career growth

Professional qualities

Raymond Lie joined Dimension Data as part of a graduate program. After rotating through areas of the business, Lie realised he had a strong affinity for cybersecurity. He gravitated towards penetration testing and offensive security where he was able to leverage his software development skills.

After 18 months in the program he was appointed as implementation engineer, but quickly moved into a more senior technical consultant role, working with the principal consultant to deliver client engagements.

He moved from delivering backend work into client presentations and pre-sales, and, with numerous outstanding engagements completed, has been rewarded repeatedly for technical excellence. The company’s regional director named him ‘Ray the Destroyer’ for his ability to consistently compromise client environments in pen tests.

Lie was moved to principal consultant to look after pre-sales and de-facto team leadership and began mentoring the next batch of graduates.

He has taken on technical leadership and client liaison in extremely complex projects and has been recognised for his excellent work by both clients and project managers.

During his five years at Dimension Data, Lie has consistently demonstrated innovation, initiative and leadership, through his development as a leader in automation initiatives across the business.

He has driven automation programs around aspects of penetration testing engagements and managed security services onboarding projects, resulting in increased profitability and client satisfaction.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

“He was named ‘Ray the Destroyer’ for his ability to consistently compromise client environments in pen tests.”

Lie also developed the business case for Dimension Data Australia to invest in CREST certification.

This included completing his own Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP) certification in 2018.

His initiative in stepping up to take on the lead role in pre-sales and team leadership of the Offensive Security team underscored his desire to develop the company’s cybersecurity practice.

For Lie, success is about growth, whether it be his own, that of his team or his clients. He believes it’s important to look back and learn from the challenges, roadblocks, successes and failures.

Path to leadership Lie was earmarked early as a future leader in Dimension Data and he represented the Australian business at a Global Ambassador bootcamp in Silicon Valley. It brought together the technical top guns and change agents for a week of workshops aimed at innovation around reusable and repeatable offerings. At this event Lie developed strong connections within the cybersecurity practices that make up the Dimension Data global business and also with some of its key vendors. As a result, he collaborated in the development of a Threat Hunting service which has been brought to market by Dimension Data in the US.

Future goals While Lie is driven to develop his technical skills, he wants to branch out and develop more of an understanding of the Dimension Data business as a whole and the business world in general. He has been shortlisted to participate in the company’s Fast Track program in 2019. Within the next 12 months, Lie will move into a Senior Technical Consultant role.

Tech 30 Under 30 Tech Awards

Career growth Cameron Zivkovic started his IT career as a technical support officer at a high school in 2011, during which time he was also completing a degree in computer science.

Since then, Zivkovic held roles at Dimension Data and Empired, working as a consultant, gaining exposure to larger enterprise customers and applications.

He joined Insight in 2017 and since then has led and delivered large, complex projects for customers. These projects have required Zivkovic to take on additional responsibility and demonstrate strong leadership skills to ensure a successful outcome.

Recently, Zivkovic was promoted to Principal Consultant– Cloud and Infrastructure at Insight. His responsibilities now include pre-sales and delivery and implementation. He has been involved in leading some of the largest digital transformation projects in WA.

While working at Insight, Cameron has also completed a Graduate Certificate of Business to gain a more holistic understanding of organisations and support his progression to a leadership role.

Professional qualities Zivkovic’s leadership qualities and ability to think strategically has helped him to understand and communicate the vision of the Insight team.

Thriving on delivering solutions that meet customers’ needs, Zivkovic ensures engagement of different areas of the business to understand the problem in order to formulate innovative solutions.

He aims to understand the complete set of requirements, current user experience and pain points, while systematically coming up with solutions to address each of the needs.

A large factor in delivering these solutions is teamwork and leveraging the diverse backgrounds and capabilities of the team in order to be successful.

“It was a great opportunity to meet other young high performers, but also learn some valuable lessons from respected industry leaders.”

45

Contributions to success Zivkovic defines success in three ways: Delivering the successful outcome to the customer, empowering other teammates to grow, gaining experience throughout project delivery. His supervisors say he is a future leader in the making.

His teammates and key customers recognise him as an expert in all things Identity and Office 365 and he is seen

by Microsoft as the “go-to-guy” in this space in WA.

Path to leadership Having a great rapport with his peers, Zivkovic will often be used as a sounding board for escalation or a reviewer on key technical decisions. His wisdom, work ethic and friendliness are used as a benchmark for junior teammates to aspire to. Zivkovic embodies a “customer-centric” mantra with clients.

Future goals Zivkovic wants to play a larger role supporting the broader Insight team, helping it to develop, grow and collaborate and, as a result, take on more projects, stand out from the crowd and constantly innovate. For Zikovic the 30 Under 30 was a “great opportunity to meet other young high performers, but also learn some valuable lessons from respected industry leaders”.

TECH

Cameron Zivkovic Principal Consultant Cloud & Infrastructure Insight

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

46 30 Under 30 Tech Awards Tech

TECH

Priom Mashuk Consultant Insentra

Career growth

Professional qualities

Contributions to success

Priom Mashuk joined Insentra in 2017 after completing his degree in computer science. He moved into Insentra’s Microsoft FastTrack team as an engineer. During this time he demonstrated his willingness and capacity to learn by attaining several Microsoft competencies in quick succession. His managers recognised his ability to foster collaborative relationships with customers, an ability that was beyond what was expected of an engineer.

As a reward his hard work, senior management helped Mashuk develop his consulting acumen. He was then moved into the company’s data migration practice as a migration consultant. Mashuk quickly gained the skills and knowledge necessary to deliver migration projects.

His achievements include delivering large global migration projects, being a trusted advisor to customers, and the development of tools to help the business to deliver results more efficiently and profitably.

Mashuk single-handedly developed the Insentra Migrations Monitoring System (IMMS) which delivers real-time alerts and monitors archive migration projects enabling fast reaction times, resource projections, and analysis of performance metrics for customer projects.

This has freed up a considerable amount of consultant time that can now be spent on pre-sales, handling additional projects or personal development.

For Mashuk, success is linked to knowing that he has brought a positive change for his customers or colleagues.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

“His managers recognised his ability to foster collaborative relationships with customers, an ability that was beyond what was expected of an engineer.”

Path to leadership Even though Mashuk is a junior consultant, colleagues believe “it is remarkable to see Priom take new consultants through our delivery methodology in almost a mentoring capacity”. Mashuk is naturally approachable, and happy to share ideas, time and accolades with his colleagues. He seeks to understand the situation fully before giving his opinion.

Future goals Mashuk wants to become a senior consultant which will mean delivering migration projects as the primary consultant with oversight and accountability to the entire project.

He will continue to assist junior consultants with developing the overall migration plan and act as an escalation point for technical issues across a number of projects.

Tech 30 Under 30 Tech Awards

47

Career growth Ramon Valery’s career began at the age of 15. He worked as a systems admin with a petrol company whilst studying IT and business before securing an internship with VMware. He then spent three years, as a commercial and senior engineer managing focus accounts across Victoria.

In 2018, he joined Rubrik as a channel technical manager. He is responsible for onboarding and enabling channel partners and increasing partner revenue. Eight months into the role, he has achieved strong results and his responsibility has been extended to territories across Asia-Pacific and Japan.

Professional qualities Rubrik is regularly called upon to present at enablement events across APJ. He has shown innovation and initiative by building a detailed, extremely impressive regional channel strategy from scratch. It has been said that Valery “sees the wood from the trees – he is always reviewing the bigger picture and how he can bring more to Rubrik’s strategy”.

Contributions to success

Future goals

Valery is known for going above and beyond and understands the importance of making the company successful rather than himself.

He knows the importance of a long-term vision along with extreme ownership and recognises success when partners trust him. Valery balances a high-level business outcomes sales approach with a deeper, technical sales approach. He knows there is no success without failure.

For the foreseeable future, Valery sees himself building a successful and sustainable A/NZ channel business for Rubrik. He is focused on more than just growing the markets and would like to be a leader in the APJ region. He plans to accomplish this by following his strategy of being a trusted partner with the channel, enabling it technically, and investing in his team.

He has also helps overseas teams develop their own channel strategy.

Path to leadership At only 28, Valery is already leading his region and achieving incredible ROI through the channel. He shows drive, hunger, energy, respect and integrity to everyone he works with.

His sense of humour is infectious. He loves sharing his thoughts and new ideas and sees working as a team as vital to success.

“Valery balances a high-level business outcomes approach with a deeper, technical approach. He knows there is no success without failure.”

TECH

Ramon Valery Channel Systems Engineer Rubrik

“ Looking forward to seeing our generation make a huge impact on the industry across ANZ and the world.”

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

48 30 Under 30 Tech Awards Tech

TECH

Matt Watson Solutions Engineer Solista Contributions to success

“I owe it to my managers and colleagues, past and present, who have given me opportunities reserved normally for those 5-10 years my senior, allowing me to throw myself in the deep end and (mostly) swim.�

Career growth

Professional qualities

Prior to joining Solista, Matt Watson worked as a systems engineer at Computers Now providing support to customers. He delivered a number of successful migrations from onpremise to cloud for up to 50 users.

His journey into technology started at his school with a role as a systems engineer responsible for more than one thousand devices as well as performing service desk duties. As a solutions engineer, Watson has had the opportunity to grow rapidly into a consultant while expanding and refining his engineering skills.

Since joining Solista in February 2018, Watson has demonstrated technical capability, as well as commitment to customer success and the Solista team. He works well as both a presales evangelist for new and emerging cloud technologies and as a delivery angel, providing customers with next generation technology solutions.

Watson is renowned for being the first person to try new technology on top of completing all required training and expanding his knowledge to include technologies that either complement or compete with his areas of expertise. He handles project challenges calmly and methodically, providing customers with a level of comfort usually delivered by people with at least 20 years experience in the industry.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

He strives to deliver excellence in the way he approaches every customer and professional interaction. Finding solutions to complex problems in a challenging environment drives him to be better at everything he does.

Happy customers are his top priority and he works to ensure that customers get the outcomes they need on each and every occasion.

Path to leadership Watson is well on track to be a CTO through his sheer depth of knowledge and continued commitment to learning and staying at the forefront of technology. He leads from the front, rolling up his sleeves as needed, presents at meet ups and delivers training and enablement for groups of more than 70 people at a time.

Mindful of his team members’ family commitments, he has always volunteered to assist customers with critical situations on weekends and interstate.

Future goals Watson is working towards transitioning into a senior role at Solista and is taking further steps to polish his public speaking and presentation skills. Together with broadening his knowledge of technology and improving his consulting skills, Watson has set out to gain additional certifications in AWS and DevOps together with providing input into customer success, consulting and sales strategy.

50 30 Under 30 Tech Awards Sales

SALES Penny Rhode BDM Araza Career growth Penny Rhode went from an internship at Araza to managing multiple clients and a team of 140 consultants in the space of five years. On top of the consultants, she currently looks after a portfolio delivering $8m revenue and major clients such as Telstra, NAB and NBN.

Professional qualities Rhode has demonstrated initiative by owning Araza’s expansion into Asia, a program she started by partnering in the channel in India. She is also a major contributor to the Araza Women Program.

Roger Rivera BDM Arrow ECS ANZ Career growth Roger Rivera started his career in IT in 2010, as a Sales Operations Coordinator at Avnet.

In 2018, he became Business Development Manager for Arrow ECS A/NZ in 2018. His career highlights include growing a $1 million wi-fi business with HPE from scratch, growing another partner by 80 per cent year-on-year and raising the privately-held company to become Arrow’s fourth largest customer.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

Contributions to success Rhode is extremely focused on growth. When she was given one customer at Telstra, with a team of 12 Araza consultants, she immediately set a goal of increasing the team to 20 consultants and revenue to $1m.

Path to leadership As an Araza graduate, Rhode excelled at building positive and strong relationships with customers including executive teams, offshore teams, product teams, key stakeholders and everyday users. She was recognised for her positive contributions to the team and received the Telstra General Manager’s Award.

Future goals Her goal for the next 12 months is to expand her current portfolio by five new clients.

Contributions to success Rivera believes success is about delivering value to partners and vendors, and staying relevant. He works to building relationships and nurturing them by taking the time to understand his customers’ businesses and their objectives.

Path to leadership Rivera has nurtured his relationships by getting to know all the relevant resources and stakeholders in his partners. He participates in business planning and discussions that help his partners achieve their goals.

Professional qualities

Future goals

Rivera consistently combines innovation with initiative and leadership to deliver value to partners so they can become more profitable and proficient at delivering technological solutions.

Rivera aims to expand his leadership skills so he can further develop and grow his team. As part of this, he will start mentoring and coaching his peers to strengthen their commercial and business acumen.

Sales 30 Under 30 Tech Awards

Jayati Gulati Executive Account Manager blueAPACHE Career growth Jayati Gulati’s intelligence and hard work has seen her grow from a technical internship to executive account manager. During her time at blueAPACHE, Gulati has launched a proper internship program, as well as being awarded sales and marketing person of the year in consecutive years.

Professional qualities Gulati has demonstrated consistent achievements, performance and growth in a relatively short timeframe. Her ability to coordinate multiple parties internally – with the client and suppliers – has created a compelling offer that has helped her clients integrate emerging technologies into their core business.

51

Contributions to success Gulati believes mentorship and helping people succeed is core to her personal success.

She states that reaching traditional job role boundaries and bringing team members together to move forward and achieve common goals and outcomes is vital to the success of the company.

Path to leadership Gulati is defined by the positive impact one can have on others, both professionally and personally.

She is always willing to listen to people and their challenges and help them out.

Future goals Gulati just wants to go from strength to strength, to manage bigger accounts and achieve bigger results. Her roadmaps and future planning with clients is already reaping rewards. She is also focused on fostering customer rapport and relationship building.

Daniel Quattrochi Partner Account Manager Cisco Career growth

Contributions to success

Daniel Quattrocchi didn’t follow the traditional path of university to internship. He started his career selling hydraulic pumps and machinery to South Australian mines. Quattrocchi then joined system integrator, Uplinx, as the company’s sixth employee. He was promoted to BDM when the company was rebranded as Outcomex. Quattrocchi opened a Melbourne branch for Outcomex in 2017 and generated $10 million in new business in his first year. He joined Cisco in July 2018 as a partner account manager.

Quattrocchi is a motivated individual yet a great team player. He is a commercially aware sales professional, dedicated to using his understanding of technology and human behaviour to achieve business outcomes.

Professional qualities

Future goals

Quattrocchi has been earmarked as a future leader at Cisco and is part of the high potential program. His determination to establish Outcomex as a Victorian government IT supplier, and the successful acquisition of 25 new brand names (and generating $10m in net new business) in his first year, show his potential as a leader.

Having joined Cisco in July 2018 as a partner account manager, he gives himself 12 months before he moves into a national or regional channel role with the vendor. Ideally Quattrocchi is keen to work with regional tier 1 partners.

Path to leadership Having built a strong understanding of the sales process, Quattrocchi is keen to develop sound technical and business acumen, around successfully delivering both simple and complex solutions.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

52 30 Under 30 Tech Awards Sales

SALES Lauren Escalona Territory Sales Executive Datto Career growth Lauren Escalona began her IT career three years ago when she joined Datto as a sales development representative. She was responsible for cold-calling the Australian channel and growing the company’s partner base. As the company grew to support the Asian marketplace, Escalona had the chance to build the partner base in the Philippines.

Professional qualities Escalona’s drive has helped create and successfully run a new partner recruitment event called Beer & Back Ups across A/NZ. The initiative has driven hundreds of new partners into the Datto Network.

She has also streamlined the company’s sales processes.

Tegan Stuart BDM Green Light Career growth Tegan Stuart started her career at Candle IT as a recruitment administrator and then consultant in 2015. A year later, she moved to Finite/ FinXL IT Professional Services as a delivery consultant, before becoming ACT delivery lead. She has spent the past two years at Green Light Worldwide, initially as an account executive, before becoming business development manager.

Professional qualities Stuart seizes opportunities within her own client portfolio and her knowledge of the market to identify new and exciting offerings that will allow Green Light to provide development services at competitive rates both within Australia and overseas through an offshore model.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

Contributions to success Success for Escalona means being part of a team that has built a strong brand within the MSP community in Australia. She believes in the importance of uniting people from diverse backgrounds, both internally at Datto and within the channel, to advance technology and provide better service.

Path to leadership Having the mantra ‘Do the Right Thing’ means Escalona doesn’t always do what is most profitable for the business. She is a strong advocate of putting the team first over her own benefit, and has an unwavering commitment to new staff members to help them succeed within the business.

Future goals Escalona plans to take the same sales and marketing initiatives she has applied in A/NZ to Asia to grow Datto’s channel in the region.

Contributions to success Stuart doesn’t attribute success to numbers and billings, but would rather consider “how we got there”. This leads her to measure success on the effort she puts into something and not the dollar figure alone. Stuart believes focusing on the broader picture is a key to major successes.

Path to leadership Stuart has a particular focus on attention to detail, asking questions to ensure she understands exactly what is expected and how she can deliver it. She has a drive and forward focus that leads her to be analytical and question how she can facilitate business efficiency and success.

Future goals Stuart plans to have her offshore development team up and running with incoming revenue producing at least 30 per cent of her total revenue portfolio in 12 months.

“The parts are coming ...” but the IT system is still down!

With Interactive’s parts availability guarantee and fast SLA options, your IT system is already back online.

Interactive is Australia’s largest multi-vendor third-party hardware maintenance provider.

Proudly supporting Australian businesses for over 30 years.

Want to know more? Contact your IT reseller, Dicker Data or Interactive.

SUPPORTED VENDORS

www.interactive.com.au or 1800 468 372

54 30 Under 30 Tech Awards Sales

SALES Jack Haynes Channel Account Executive Sophos

Contributions to success Haynes strongly believes success is defined as an accomplishment of an aim or purpose. He advocates positivity in empowering customers, taking responsibility for projects, and initiating and learning from new experiences.

Path to leadership Career growth Jack Haynes has gone from strength to strength since he stepped into the channel at Ingram as regional Dell EMC business development manager. Today, he is onboarding, training, building relationships internally and developing preliminary strategies at Sophos.

Professional qualities At Ingram, he created and executed an entirely new business strategy designed to exceed expectations. As part of this role, Haynes also worked closely with a small team to support the business objectives.

Kate Basten Distribution Manager A/NZ Juniper Networks Career growth

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

As an emerging leader, Haynes expects to be managing and empowering teams to exceed their KPIs and drive business growth. He recognises that looking after your team and colleagues are the biggest factors contributing to customer satisfaction and overall business success.

Future goals Having stepped into his current role in March 2019, Haynes wants to ensure he has the right strategy in place, not only for customers but also for those around him. He says this is critical to him achieving his personal development goals.

Contributions to success Basten believes accepting and continuing to adapt to changes personally and in her work life are keys to future success.

Path to leadership

Kate Basten joined Juniper Networks as an Inside Sale Representative. Nine years later, she became the person the company relied on to ensure orders and shipments were in on time, in order to capture the maximum revenue each quarter.

She is most productive when she has a strong sense of purpose within the team in which she works and the wider company. She continually demonstrates leadership skills when it comes to her peers, and with junior staff who come to her for guidance and support. That attitude helps in development as a leader.

Professional qualities

Future goals

Basten is described as a self-starter who identifies areas of concern or challenges within the Juniper business and looks to find ways to solve these issues in a strategic manner. She plays a pivotal role within Juniper and makes a significant impact both within the company and with its partner community.

Her promotion path has already been defined by management and continued endorsement from her peers and customers. Basten’s experience, both in the IT industry and at Juniper Networks, will see her in a more senior role in the next 12 months.

Sales 30 Under 3030 Under Tech 30 Awards Sales

Halen Youles Security Sales Executive The Missing Link Career growth In two years, Halen Youles went from cold calling C-suite executives in a media and events company to being head hunted by The Missing Link which created the role of inside security sales executive specifically for him.

Professional qualities His co-workers are impressed by his lead by example attitude, as well as his drive for innovation. Youles led successful discussions around developing an Inside Sales team for The Missing Link’s Security division.

55

Contributions to success Youles aims to build and mentor the Inside Sales team with the ability to canvass both NSW and Victoria. He is also keen to develope relationships with C-level management within new and existing client businesses.

Path to leadership While completing a full-time degree, Youles has made time to mentor other inside sales personnel.

He believes integrity in business is important and will pass up a sale if he believes the company can’t deliver the right solution. But still maintain a solid relationship with the client.

Future goals Youles plans to become one of the most successful security sales executives in the business, with the highest number of clients for managed services.

To do this, he plans to continue developing and training the inside sales team. He also wants to build out more personal relationships as well as finishing his education with a business degree, majoring in finance.

Aurelie Viger BDM Vibrato Contributions to success

Career growth Aurelie Viger started in a highly demanding and competitive door-to-door sales role before eventually becoming a tech sales and recruitment consultant in 2014. She built an impressive customer base from scratch, opening multiple large accounts with companies such as News Corp. She has managed technology events and become a leading networker and pioneer in the devOps industry.

Professional qualities Viger has always focused on finding new and innovative ways to engage with her clients and potential customers. She has proven herself adept at branching out to channel partners and is a champion of Vibrato’s ‘bespoke offerings’ that are centered on its emerging services.

She is a strong believer in success being measured, planned, tracked and, of course, celebrated. Viger says being connected and surrounded by the right energy and keeping a healthy lifestyle help maintain a clear vision of future goals and the how to achieve them. Viger feels having a safe place to work in a business that has a high sense of inclusion, flexible work arrangements, family days, and support outside of work, is vital for success.

Path to leadership She believes leadership is a constant and complex learning curve, where you should not shy away from challenges. Viger has a strong entrepreneurial mindset and is constantly looking for feedback and ways to improve.

Future goals To ensure Sydney becomes Vibrato’s centre of innovation, Viger has set out a detailed strategy, defined immediate goals for this financial year and has taken over team scheduling.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

56 Emerging Leaders Photos

CHRISTINE WONG

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

58 ARN Connect Juniper Networks

Darrin Iatrou (Juniper Networks)

How can the channel service new customer demands?

In the quest for increased performance, reliability and availability, customers are allocating dollars to pursue transformation agendas. This exclusive ARN Connect event, in association with Juniper Networks and Westcon-Comstor, outlined the end-user value proposition through professional services and how partners in Australia can capitalise.

James Henderson reports.

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

As Australian businesses demand greater workload and application agility across multiple environments, software-defined and cloud are taking centre stage in the channel.

That’s the view of Darrin Iatrou, area partner director of Juniper Networks, when assessing the changing customer landscape in 2019 and beyond, and the subsequent impact for partners.

“These are the two major trends that we believe are currently impacting the market,” he explained. “The first is all about softwaredefined as customers demand agility within their ever-expanding networks. Our customers are finding the ability to move workloads from a data centre to the cloud, or syncing various connected network services, is fast becoming the norm.”

The second trend is an “insatiable appetite” for cloud across the country, added Iatrou.

Juniper Networks ARN Connect

“We have been enabling more of our customers to move their workloads or network functions to the cloud,” he said.

“Fortunately, Juniper Networks is immersed within both trends, so we’re strongly positioned to help our customers and partners evolve their networks.”

In a local market expected to spend $94 billion on technology in 2019, according to Gartner findings, the data centre systems segment is forecast to account for $3.1 billion.

Meanwhile, Australia’s IT services industry is expected to grow by nearly four per cent by 2023, as businesses increasingly embrace the digital economy.

According to IDC, services market revenue will climb to just over $19.4 billion this year, rising to $23.4 billion over the next four years.

Driving the growth will be customers exploring digital transformation strategies, with IT service providers increasingly expected to take on the role of a business consultant.

“Customer demands are ever present and pressure on the channel is at an alltime high,” Iatrou said. “This demand stems from the transformation we have seen as an industry over the past three-to-four years.

“The channel in particular is developing new skills, augmenting go-to-market (GTM) strategies to keep step with these market changes, building their own cloud - their own or outsourced, and putting more ‘skin in the game’ when it comes to service-level agreements (SLA) and support infrastructure.”

Market plans

Earlier this year, Juniper entered into an agreement to acquire advanced wireless start-up Mist Systems in a deal amounting to US$405 million.

Founded by former Cisco executives, Mist created an AI-driven wireless platform, designed to make Wi-Fi more “predictable, reliable and measurable”.

The start-up has also developed an AIdriven virtual assistant, Marvis, to simplify wireless troubleshooting while providing insight into customer and network behaviour.

“Mist Systems is a great fit for Juniper and for our enterprise customers,” explained Rami Rahim, CEO of Juniper Networks. “Juniper

and Mist share a common strategic goal. We believe in the software-defined enterprise and Mist’s focus on bringing AI to IT is consistent with our core belief that we need to simplify operations and improve customer experience while lowering costs.

“With Mist, we are adding a market leading solution to complement our portfolio, drive the cloud transition within the enterprise and accelerate our enterprise growth.”

Rahim said the acquisition will expand Juniper’s presence in the “rapidly growing” cloud-managed segment of the wireless networking market.

Furthermore, the deal enables the extension of cloud-based management and

“Customer demands are ever present and pressure on the channel is at an all-time high”

end-to-end AI-driven visibility across the end-to-end enterprise network, allowing the vendor to offer a software-defined solution for simplifying operations, improving user experience and lowering total cost of ownership.

“Juniper is expecting a strong year across our enterprise product and solutions portfolio,” Iatrou added. “The acquisition of Mist earlier this year positions us well in the campus and branch arena as we now leverage the AI and machine learning capabilities of Mist.

“Mist will also complement our switching and security portfolio nicely in Australia and New Zealand. We are also continuing strong channel growth in the cloud market, helping our partners define their cloud strategy and build networks to evolve and scale.”

59

Channel plans

In looking ahead, Iatrou advised partners to establish a “strong cloud offering” in Australia, billed as a “paramount” exercise for the channel to undertake.

“SD-WAN and SD-LAN will continue to grow as customers look for ways to be more agile while reducing costs,” Iatrou added. “But also, partners must challenge the status quo in wireless. Ask your customers if they are happy with their current wireless vendor and if they are not, look for alternatives like Mist.”

But Iatrou acknowledged that transformation through the channel is seldom so straightforward.

“Partners will naturally need to overcome their own unique challenges,” he said.

“However, the overall challenge facing the channel in the year ahead will be their ability to augment their businesses to align with industry changes.

“Partners should look seriously at building out an SD-WAN offering, understand what their cloud strategy looks like and the tangible benefits for their prospective customers.”

Despite wireless being “ever-present” in the Australian market, Iatrou accepted that user satisfaction is “generally poor”, creating a gap for emerging players such as Mist to tackle wireless “very differently” for customers.

“A successful Juniper partner is one that is well-invested in technical expertise, has a strong sales group with an intimate knowledge of our GTM strategy and connections into all relevant business units within Juniper,” he explained.

At Juniper, Iatrou said the vendor’s local channel has been on a “significant growth” trajectory for the past two years.

“In the next 12 months, our key priority is to nurture those new partners and align them to our Juniper Partner Advantage program,” he said. “Specific emphasis will be placed on our specialisations, spanning security, data centre, cloud and services.

“Training with certification is an important metric to ensure our customers have a channel with core technical competencies in our products and solutions. Our recent acquisition of Mist has brought with it a new priority to identify and enable partners capable of delivering a wireless strategy.” arnnet.com.au Q2 2019

60 ARN Connect Photos

1

1. Richard Mitton (Tambla) 2. Paul Bogusz (Westcon-Comstor); Matt Watson (Solista); Fernando Marambio (Blutone Technologies) 3. Jason Jarvis (Dark Horse Systems); Elie Ohan (Dark Horse Systems) 4. Nathan Lowe (ASI Solutions) 5. Adrian Loong (Datacom) 6. Darrin Iatrou (Juniper Networks); Anthony Moran (Crystal Echo); Gerardo Dรกngelo (Mind Tattoo) 7. Rob Kingma (ICT Networks); Roger Geerts (Juniper Networks); James Henderson (ARN) 8. Oliver Berger (GorillaStack); Dean Hutchinson (Hal Group)

CHRISTINE WONG

2

4

3

6

5

7

8

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

Reduce complexity.

Increase agility.

Maximise IoT poten�al.

Profit from 5G.

DRIVE AGILE SERVICE DELIVERY WITH OUR SECURE AND AUTOMATED MULTICLOUD. Learn more at juniper.net/cloud

DISTRIBUTED BY

62 Interview Enablis

Enablis:

Delivering a managed services ComUnity LILIA GUAN TALKS TO ENABLIS CEO JON EVANS ABOUT BUILDING THE RIGHT FOUNDATIONS FOR CLOUD MIGRATION. Customers of managed IT communication and cloud services provider, Enablis, are focusing on digital transformation and moving apps to the cloud, according to CEO, Jon Evans.

“Many seem to be focusing heavily on application and ERP improvements on their business,” he said.

“Our focus on the profile of our clients is unique and specialised which is why when we compete in this area our value is differentiated.”

Evans said being able to deliver “valuable business outcomes from the technology and services provided” was key to its success.

Service providers must be able to take clients on a journey during major projects, such as digital transformation, he said.

After enhancing its security portfolio, Enablis is focusing more heavily on marketing security, than in previous years.

“We have continuously reviewed disruptive technology and vendors and brought them into our portfolio where there is an obvious synergy and value to be gained,” Evans said.

Cloud, security and SDWAN are “top of the pops” for the service provider, he said.

“Our customers are focused on knowing where to place their budget to get maximum return while also keeping their core data secure,” according to Evans.

With AWS and Azure dominating the marketplace. the service provider is looking at best options to grow ongoing annuity revenue Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

in this market – a challenge for businesses.

“There are so many options available,” he said. “SaaS security appears to be a logical winner.”

Evans said it’s important for Enablis to remain competitive and choose the right vendors and services without “spreading too thin”.

“It’s integral we ensure all projects are executed well. The foundations must be right for the strategies and direction being taken.

We must be able to support the end user’s sales without over complicating the deals,” he said.

Since its inception in 2006, the company is continuously increasing productivity, reducing operating costs, and enabling customers to maximise the benefits of new era cloud-based applications.

“Being able to deliver valuable business outcomes from the technology and services provided was key to our success.”

“Enablis plans to continue on a sustained growth of over 15 per cent in performance [profit], for the new financial year,” Evans said.

When the company launched onto

Jon Evans (Enablis)

the marketplace, it was known as Azzurri Communications, before we changed its name to Enablis in 2015.

At the time, Evans told ARN, the decision was based on a review of its core values and proposition in the market, prompting the name change.

Enablis evolved its business focus from data speeds and feeds to a services model and expanded its technology portfolio to include hosted cloud voice, hosted unified communications, next generation cloud, wi-fi services, and video collaboration.

Enablis has also expanded into the Melbourne market and has an office in New Zealand to help support its trans-Tasman customers.

Channel Choice Awards

Nominations Open Channel Choice, ARN’s online only people’s choice awards, allows readers the chance to choose their favourite vendor, distributor, partner and channel enabler over the past 12 months.

Channel Choice Awards Close: July 26, 2019 Celebration Dinner: September 19, 2019 Hyatt Regency, Sydney w w w. a r n n e t .c o m . a u / i n n ova t i o n _ a w a r d s

FOR SPONSORSHIPS CONTACT: Janice Tong: janice_tong@idg.com.au Cherry Yumul: cherry_yumul@idg.com.au Eduardo Silva: eduardo_silva@idg.com.au Blayne Reilly: blayne_reilly@idg.com.au

64 Interview IntegrationWorks

INTEGRATIONWORKS:

EXPANDING ITS FOOTPRINT ACROSS AUSTRALIA

LILIA GUAN TALKS TO INTEGRATIONWORKS’ MANAGING DIRECTOR ABOUT KEEPING A VENDOR AGNOSTIC ENVIRONMENT. Managed service provider, IntegrationWorks, continues to grow strongly in Australia, opening a new office in Brisbane this year and increasing staff numbers from two to 54 in just five years.

Founded in New Zealand where it operates out of Wellington and Auckland, the company also has offices in Sydney, Melbourne and London.

IntegrationWorks managing director, Ian Richards, said the company is focused on delivering great value propositions to its clients and building long term sustainable relationships.

Importantly, the service provider wants to promote a sustainable business that employs Ian Richard

Q2 2019 arnnet.com.au

and empowers its diverse workforce and to continue working with government and industry to improve interoperability across the board.

“The opportunities present in the Australian market centre around assisting clients to automate their IT delivery, and connect internally and externally,” Richards said. “We can help them attract and retain customers, reduce risk, and expose their services to a greater audience, or reduce costs through interoperability.”

A successful technology provider must be able to provide ongoing thought leadership and direction, and have the ability to deliver quickly via automated infrastructure, he said.

“Technology continually evolves, so providing up-to-date advice and thought leadership both internally and to our clients is essential for IntegrationWorks,” he said. “We have a leadership team tasked with ensuring we are ahead of the curve, and a curious bunch of technologists who always challenge new ideas and emerging technologies.”

Through its vendor partners, training, and accreditation regimes, IntegrationWorks stays at the cutting edge of integration technologies.

“Our customers investment focus is varied yet most include increasing their digital capability to ensure they remain relevant,” he said.

Clients want to achieve business outcomes ranging from risk reduction, business

efficiency, customer and retention, to realising maximum gains from significant investments in existing systems and technology (legacy core systems).

The company has an Integration Maturity Model that allows it to evaluate all areas of a business – including process, governance, and architecture – and, as a result, help clients realise a significant return from their technology investment, according to Richards.

“Having a clear strategy and timeboxed roadmap for execution remain key to our customers,” he said. “The business needs to continually challenge the outcomes of the roadmap to ensure the technology is delivering to their requirements.”

Richard said technology will struggle to deliver a business’ goals unless it has a clear outcome in mind.

“The two technologies impacting most on the channel currently are artificial intelligence [AI] and robotic process automation [RPA].

RPA is reliant on static and well-defined business processes,” he said. “Both AI and RPA can be enabled by data provided by a flexible integration layer, making it beneficial in driving integration needs.”

Richards said the key challenge for technology providers/channel partners wasn’t IT, but rather the limited skilled expert resources available in the current market.

“IntegrationWorks sees recruitment as this year’s greatest challenge,” he said.

BECOME AN ACER DIAMOND PARTNER AND REAP THE REWARDS

To maximise success in a rapidly evolving market, you need partners that have the expertise to help you grow and add value to your business.

The Acer Diamond Partner Program caters to SMB, SME and B2B markets.

As a commercially-focussed specialist dealer, you will enjoy a full range of Acer solutions and services. Our ultimate aim is to help grow your business.

BENEFITS OF BEING AN ACER DIAMOND PARTNER Rewards and incentives to motivate you to succeed and unlock generous rebates

Always on support with a dedicated Acer Channel Manager assigned to your business

Access to exclusive rights to supply Acer products through partner deal registration

A demonstration program like no other

For more information and enquiries please contact sales.aca@acer.com ACER AUTHORISED DISTRIBUTORS