Steve Coad - Big Switch Networks A/NZ Managing Director
Former Aruba Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) managing director, Steve Coad, has taken the top local job at networking start-up, Big Switch Networks.
The company said the appointment was part of its effort to expand its A/NZ leadership team during “a period of hypergrowth in the region.”
As managing director of A/NZ, Coad’s primary role will be to support channel partners in creating end-user demand as well as growing the vendor’s existing A/NZ business - he will report to the vendor’s Asia Pacific (APAC) managing director, Mario Vecchio.
“Steve will play a meaningful role in the continued expansion of our footprint in Australia and New Zealand,” Vecchio said.
“I’ve always believed that to build a smart, successful team you must hire people who are brighter than you and bring a different set of skills to the table.
“Steve is an industry stalwart with extensive experience in networking, virtualisation and storage, which will lend itself well as customers continue to select Big Switch for their next-generation software defined data centres.”
Coad joins the networking startup from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) subsidiary Aruba Networks, where he spent almost five years.
During that time Coad oversaw the company’s local transition to the HPE ecosystem.
Prior to joining Aruba, Coad held leadership positions at Good Technology, VMware, IBM, EMC and Cisco
“I am thrilled to join Big Switch at such an exciting time in the company’s journey,” Coad said.
“I am passionate about building teams and look forward to playing a meaningful role in scaling Big Switch in the A/NZ market.”
Big Switch Networks was founded by Kyle Forster and Guido Appenzeller in late 2009. The company’s offering is based on technology known as software defined networking (SDN) originally developed out of Stanford University in the US.
The company officially launched in Australia in Q3 2016 and said it has already has customer wins in verticals that include government, financial services, service providers and telecommunications carriers.
Big Switch’s key partners in A/NZ include Newgen Systems, Dell EMC Networking and Edge-Core Networks.
