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VMware to invest $100m to develop talent in EMEA

Admire Moyo
By Admire Moyo, ITWeb's news editor.
Johannesburg, 15 Apr 2019
Jean-Pierre Brulard, senior vice-president and general manager for VMware EMEA.
Jean-Pierre Brulard, senior vice-president and general manager for VMware EMEA.

US-based enterprise software company VMware has announced a $100 million, five-year investment to develop technology talent across the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.

The company says it will develop a Digital Sales Centre, based in Barcelona, Spain. The centre is intended to create 120 jobs, with capacity to increase to 250 people as part of VMware's strategy to develop some of the brightest talent from across the EMEA region.

The Nasdaq-listed VMware provides cloud computing and platform virtualisation software and services. Dell Technologies is a majority shareholder in VMware.

In February, the company announced financial results for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2019 where revenue for the fourth quarter was $2.59 billion, an increase of 16% from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018.

In SA, the company recently told ITWeb that VMware's growth is continuing to show noticeable acceleration in the country, with the region performing above average.

VMware's Digital Sales Centre in Barcelona's @22 District will be headed up by Angus McGeachie, as senior director for Digital Sales Centre EMEA.

According to VMware, the new centre will allow the company to better support customers and provide a breadth of career paths for employees, including a sales academy.

It adds the centre will develop some of the most strategic roles for VMware in EMEA, across its commercial, partner, professional services, education, customer success and sales development teams for VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud and other VMware cloud solutions.

The enterprise software company says the launch is central to its vision to create a Digital Sales Centre that will allow it to scale and span across VMware solutions, industries, channels and services, and will become the home of the software-as-a-service business across the EMEA region.

"The Digital Sales Centre will become a site of innovation for our sales organisation, meaning plenty of opportunity for people to progress their career in VMware field roles across the EMEA region," says Jean-Pierre Brulard, senior vice-president and general manager for VMware EMEA.

"I welcome Angus to VMware, an individual with extensive experience of developing technology talent in the region, and someone who can enable VMware employees to thrive in a city that has one of the fastest growing tech scenes across EMEA."

Ian Jansen van Rensburg, VMware senior systems engineer, says: "We are seeing an uptake of customers in the South Africa region that would like to build multi and hybrid cloud strategies. They would like to support their internal users better, while at the same time drive business innovation to ensure sustainability and growth for the future."

According to Jansen van Rensburg, organisations in SA have come to the realisation that they need to evolve their IT environments faster than the business to be more profitable and remain relevant in the near future.

"In order to accomplish this, they need to modernise the data centre, mobilise the digital workforce, transform networking and security, as well as integrate cloud environments."

Wide area networking is also one of the top priorities, he notes. "Organisations need to invest in a software-defined wide area network strategy. With all this in mind, the opportunities are endless for the South African market as we move towards a software-defined, digital South Africa.

"The VMware solutions portfolio and customer base are growing in the region. The $100 million investment to develop technology talent across Europe, Middle East and Africa showcases our commitment to keep up with this growth and provide better service to our customers."

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