Ingram Micro New Zealand has snapped up Westcon Group's Steve Shaw the distributor seeks to drive its IBM business.

Shaw, who was previously pre-sales consultant for IBM Storage at Westcon, takes on the role of technical business development manager for Ingram Micro New Zealand's IBM team.

Kaz Otsubo, Ingram Micro NZ business manager, says the distributor is investing strongly in its IBM business and continuing to expand the IBM ecosystem throughout the New Zealand market.

“It's a pivotal time for IBM business in New Zealand and we are working closely with IBM at all levels – global, regional and local – to identify and support the next generation of new partners for solutions such as cloud, XaaS, utility models and embedded solutions,” Otsubo says.

“Steve will play a critical role in identifying those new opportunities and being a bridge between IBM hardware and software.

Otsubo says Shaw brings with him a technical IBM expertise and strong channel relationships.

Shaw has more than 30 years IT experience. His time at Westcon extends back to 2009, when he was IBM business development manager and then technical pre-sales consultant at the then Datastor.

Other roles include IBM business development manager at Cellnet and pre-sales storage at Revera and at Hitachi.

Shaw, who started his career as a mainframe engineer, says he's seen a large number of changes in the industry during his career. “I've seen the changes from centralised to distributed computing, the shift to storage consolidation and software-defined networking, systems virtualisation, managed services providers and the emergence of cloud,” Shaw says.

“Each evolution has created challenges and opportunities and it is exciting to work in such a dynamic environment.

“Having known the IBM team at Ingram Micro for 10 years, I am looking forward to working with them and bringing our collective knowledge and experience to deliver the best results for Ingram Micro and its customers,” Shaw adds.