UK NetApp boss Thurlow has split

Following a substantive restructure across EMEA, NetApp has hired Chris Greenwood - it's now-former director of northeast Europe, Russia and Turkey - to head up operations in the UK and Ireland.

As revealed by us last month, NetApp is cutting costs by shuttering regional offices in a bunch of countries, including some that were managed by Greenwood. It is relying on distributors and resellers to provide local support for customers rather than having a direct presence.

However, sources told us the company was keen to retain Greenwood's services and asked him to succeed UK chief Nick Thurlow, who rejoined NetApp in early 2017 and left three weeks ago.

Greenwood will report to Alexander Wallner, NetApp senior rep and GM for EMEA, who sent us a statement about the changes that contained very little that was worthy of quoting.

Sources close to NetApp said Greenwood is to plough efforts into key sales areas of cloud and hyper-converged infrastructure as UK ops had been viewed by senior management as "not executing".

In its Q3 of fiscal '19 ended 25 January, NetApp reported revenue of $967m, up 2 per cent on the year-ago quarter, software maintenance of $239m, up from $221m, and hardware maintenance of $357m, a dip of $9m.

NetApp execs said annualised recurring revenue from cloud data services was $33m, up 22 per cent from the previous quarter - hardly the stellar growth that some mature cloud players are reporting. NetApp still does not highlight HCI-specific numbers.

The offices NetApp closed in April included Luxembourg, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Croatia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, Romania, Turkey, South Eastern Europe, Portugal and African branches including Nigeria and South Africa.

The so-called Partner Led Model involves asking distributors Arrow ECS, Tech Data, ALEF Distribution and Westcon to between them, act as NetApp's infrastructure. The hope is that this will boost the returns NetApp is making in those geographies.

Updated

NetApp has contacted us to claim that Thurlow - contrary to sources comments - has remained on board to help Greenwood "as he transitions into his new role" and will "move onto new adventures" at the end of July.

source theregister

Industry: Data Centre News