Paul Ruinaard, the sales manager for Sub-Saharan Africa at cloud company Nutanix, is moving to head the local sales organisation of data analytics and security company Splunk, he told ITWeb this week.
Ruinaard (57) has spent the last six years at Nutanix, and will be replaced by Rowan Grierson, who was previously Nutanix sales director for the West, East and Central Africa regions.
Ruinaard says he foresees plenty of opportunities for Splunk in South Africa, particularly in unlocking insights for enterprises with large datasets, such as banks and insurance companies.
“I’m one of those people who enjoy a cutting edge market, rather than a mass market where (the product) it’s commoditised."
Paul Ruinaard
He also sees opportunities for Splunk in the public sector, and mentions healthcare as a natural candidate, specifically around the national database that will be used for the mass vaccination programme.
“That’s an ideal candidate for a big data engine to ingest the whole population register.”
He says his personal growth philosophy was that one needed to reinvent oneself every couple of years. Once he found himself getting too comfortable, it was time to look for new opportunities.
“I’m one of those people who enjoy a cutting edge market, rather than a mass market where (the product) it’s commoditised."
In Splunk’s latest results, for Q2 ending July 31 2020, total revenues were $492 million, down 5% year-on-year. Its annual recurring revenue (ARR) for cloud was up 89% to $568m, and total ARR was up 50% to $1.93 billion. Cloud revenue was $126 million, up 79%. Operating expenses on R&D, sales, marketing and admin also increased over the quarter, and was just over $599 million. Its net loss was $261 million for the quarter, up from $100 million the previous year.
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