Cloud evangelist Jonathan Kropf has returned to the Velocity Group.
Kropf was most recently CEO of Tarsus On Demand, a business that was originally spun out of the Velocity Group and of which 50% was sold to the Tarsus Group in 2013.
Tarsus On Demand was the distributor's first foray into the delivery of cloud services to its resellers. It was grown by Kropf and his team from a small data centre and cloud services provider business to a fully-fledged cloud distribution and services company.
Kropf says the prospect of re-joining a company he helped establish is attractive. "I led the Tarsus On Demand initiative and therefore went with the business when it was sold. I have always maintained a financial interest in Velocity. I sold all my shares in Tarsus On Demand over a year ago and achieved what I set out to do there. I feel my job is done and am looking forward to new challenges."
The former founding member will return in the capacity of director, with a focus on internal special projects, replacing legacy systems as well as API integration into customer environments.
"We will be making an acquisition in the next six months in the services space to enhance managed service, consulting and cloud environment management. I am currently in charge of identifying the correct companies and I highlighted a few," he adds.
Kropf will also lead the establishment of the hybrid cloud practice that will oversee the delivery of Microsoft Azure, Azure Stack and Office 365 services.
He explains: "The hyper-scale cloud providers are landing their own data centres in SA now. This means we finally have the ability to decide how we want infrastructure and applications deployed. In the past, our use of the hyper-scale providers was limited due to bandwidth latency and an inability to procure through the channel at a local rand price. Velocity will be focusing on bringing the expertise around cloud and its abilities, which I have gained intimate knowledge of in my role at Tarsus, as well as the ability to supply infrastructure.
"I don't see a true hybrid cloud practice at a partner level in SA. The ability to have a holistic discussion with customers has sorely been lacking. It is always approached from the infrastructure side or the cloud side, but never in a neutral manner in the middle of the two. We aim to close that gap. We have started a series of free events at Microsoft called Get #AzurePractical. This will give tips and tricks to deploy your first Azure workloads."
The new practice will continue to work with Tarsus On Demand as its primary distributor, assisting the company to grow.
"We are looking forward to working with Jonathan in a different capacity and are delighted to welcome him back to the Tarsus Technology Group in the capacity of a customer," says Miles Crisp, CEO of Tarsus Technology Group.
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