NetApp has appointed Morne Bekker as the new South African country manager and district manager for the SADC region.
Bekker will be responsible for all NetApp business across the southern African region. His responsibilities will include the development and execution of sales and channel strategies, expanding the NetApp customer base, local skills development and enhancing the partner and alliances ecosystem.
“The appointment of Morne is indicative of the cusp in NetApp’s South African presence. Our recent acquisition of SolidFire and unique portfolio including the most comprehensive enterprise flash storage offering in the business, places us in a distinctive market position. We therefore require the right leadership as demonstrated by Morne, to execute strategy, develop long standing industry relationships and bring in new prospects,” states Fadi Kanafani, regional director Middle East & Africa at NetApp.
Having started his career in the auditing profession, Bekker later spent several years within senior positions at Internet Solutions, Datacentrix and Hewlett Packard.
“My professional journey gave me the necessary knowledge to understand how enterprise storage has evolved in recent years,” he says. “Traditionally, large South African enterprises have been cautious when adopting the cloud. Reasons for this cloud lag have included long standing legacy systems and confusion around data sovereignty.
“This mind-set is slowly starting to shift as organisations start to pursue a hybrid cloud strategy, retaining a significant amount of storage capacity on-premises for reasons of performance, security, regulatory and compliance. NetApp is in a unique position in the market to address these concerns today through its strategic industry partnerships and ongoing commitment to customers.”
Bekker holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Internal Auditing from the University of Pretoria and has studied towards a Higher Diploma in Computer Auditing from the University of the Witwatersrand. His passions include golf, cricket, tennis and the outdoors.
