SAP A/NZ president and managing director, Colin Brookes.
SAP has appointed its chief operating officer (COO) for Australia and New Zealand, Colin Brookes, as its new president and managing director for the local region.
Brookes replaces interim SAP A/NZ president and managing director, Stephen Moore, who has spent nine months leading the SAP’s local operations as president and managing director.
Moore also steps into a new role of his own: executive director for SAP in A/NZ.
In his new role, Brookes will be responsible for all customer operations across the local region, and execute on the software vendor’s current proclaimed strategy, which is aimed at helping organisations “simplify operations and deliver for customers by building on the latest capabilities from SAP”.
The move into the local leadership position comes relatively quickly for Brookes, who joined SAP A/NZ from SAP United Kingdom and Ireland as A/NZ COO in January this year.
Brookes has over 20 years’ international experience IT sector, including in leadership positions with organisations such as Software AG and CA Technologies.
“In the past six months, Colin Brookes has brought a new level of sophistication to our operations that has translated to better outcomes for and higher satisfaction among our customers in Australia and New Zealand,” said SAP’s new president for Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), Scott Russell. “Under his leadership, I am confident this trend will accelerate.”
Russell himself was revealed as SAP’s new APJ president on 2 July. He was previously president and managing director for SAP Southeast Asia (SEA).
In his new role, Russell will be responsible for growing SAP’s business and presence in the APJ region, including Australia and New Zealand, Japan, Korea, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia.
Meanwhile, Moore, in his new capacity as SAP A/NZ executive director, will be responsible for building on the growth and adoption of SAP’s extensive cloud portfolio and supporting the company’s wider customer, partner and community ecosystem.
Moore joined SAP in 2011 as a delivery executive for SAP Asia Pacific Japan (APJ), progressing to technology sales and delivery roles with SAP ANZ and SAP APJ.
“Under Stephen Moore’s leadership, organisations in Australia and New Zealand have adopted our cloud solutions at an unprecedented rate,” Russell said. “We look forward to his continued leadership as we simplify and harmonise the way we deliver on our customers’ increasing demand for our innovation in the cloud.”
According to the software vendor, the regional leadership team shuffle comes as more new and existing customers adopt the company’s cloud solutions and digital innovation systems.
The top tier leadership changes come as the German software vendor works to build up its cloud profile, embracing software-as-a-service (SaaS) business models and the public cloud.
In May, Moore told Fairfax Media that a $10 million hiring spree slated to be undertaken by SAP locally in the first half of this year was a result of increases in the company's cloud-based software subscriptions.
At the time, SAP was recruiting for more than 40 new Australian jobs on its global careers page, with 39 new local job opportunities being published in April alone.
