NetApp UK&I boss talks growth and channel opportunities

NetApp's incoming UK & Ireland managing director has underlined the importance of the channel for the firm with partners being viewed as an essential part of his growth strategy.

Chris Greenwood has been with the vendor for nine years and most recently was based in the Nordics, running the vendor's Northern region, before getting this chance to become senior director and general manager for NetApp’s business in the United Kingdom and Ireland. He replaces Nick Thurlow, who had been in the role for the past two and half years.

His first role at the vendor involved working with partners and Greenwood said he steps into his latest role with the advantage of understanding the firm's channel network.

"I am pretty familiar with the UK channel organisation and the partners we work with," he added "We will be fully committed to the channel going forward, as we have been for the last 27 years."

Greenwood said that the firm was looking to increase the focus on customers and look to work with them on major projects, including AI, dev ops and cloud.

"We are very committed and focused on what we have to do and are very ambitious about the growth that we can gain in the UK market," he added "We have a very clear growth strategy selling more of our portfolio to existing customers."

He said that the UK market still had plenty of growth left to exploit and it would be pointing partners in the direction of the emerging opportunities.

Greenwood added that channel ecosystem also continued to evolve with NetApp signing up more cloud-first partners as well as emphasising the alliances, with the likes of Nvidia, that were part of the ecosystem the firm was developing.