SAP names ForgeRock’s Sumal Karu as channels head
Software company, SAP, has appointed Sumal Karu as its A/NZ global channels and general business general manager. The global channels and general business division replaces the global partner operations, which was formerly run by Greg Miller.
Karu joins the SAP A/NZ senior executive team, led by John Ruthven, on February 1. He will be responsible for driving a heightened focus on the SME market through new and existing sales channels – especially through the adoption of SAP Cloud solutions.
“Our global channels and general business team is poised to help our partners across /NZ scale with SAP in 2016. Sumal’s proven track record of building and leading high-growth sales teams will be invaluable as SAP and its partners serve the needs of the growing SME market across A/NZ,” SAP A/NZ president and managing director, John Ruthven, said.
Karu joins SAP A/NZ from ForgeRock, where he served as its Asia-Pacific and Japan senior vice-president for more than a year. In this role, he facilitated market entry for its Identity and Access solutions in Asia-Pacific and Japan.
Prior to that, he was the Asia-Pacific and Japan application delivery and service virtualisation vice-president at CA Technologies for almost two years in Singapore. Within CA Technologies, he was also the Asia-Pacific growth markets vice-president for almost three years.
In addition, Karu has worked in enterprise software since the mid-nineties and has held senior roles with organisations such as Netsuite across Asia-Pacific and Japan, as well as Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
“SAP has displayed a tremendous rate of innovation over the last few years, and there are significant opportunities for both local and global partners to scale with us in the A/NZ markets. I look forward to leading a team with incredible depth of expertise in the channel community and to engaging with our partners to help them deliver simple solutions to more growing companies,” Karu mentioned.
