Rick Powles Strengthens Acronis' EMEA Management Team Bringing Extensive Enterprise Market Experience
LONDON, UK, 23 January 2013 - Acronis® today announced the appointment of IT industry veteran Rick Powles as Managing Director, UK & Ireland. Powles brings more than two decades of experience delivering sales growth within software companies across Europe, Middle East and Africa, including CommVault® and Veritas/Symantec®. He will develop new channels and strategies to help Acronis address new opportunities presented by the widespread adoption of virtual environments, cloud storage and the consumerisation of IT.
Based in the Acronis® office in London, Powles will be responsible for creating and maintaining strong relationships within its growing customer base, and with channel partners focused on small business and enterprise needs across the UK & Ireland.
"IT organisations are under tremendous pressure to deliver every time, everywhere access to data, on any device by an increasingly empowered end user. When combined with the explosive growth in data, a "virtual first" movement and pressures to optimise cloud adoption, they have to re-think data protection approaches and stay relevant," commented Powles. "I am excited to join Acronis® at this transformational time in their business, and at that of our customers."
"We are delighted to welcome somebody of Rick's calibre and experience to our team," said Alan Laing, vice president EMEA, Acronis®. "Rick has successfully built and led sales teams in both SMB and enterprise organisations, and has demonstrated his ability to achieve significant sales growth. The combination of sector, segment and channel knowledge will help to strengthen and grow our business in the UK & Ireland."
Powles joins Acronis® from Informatica® (Nasdaq:INFA) where he served as vice president of Northern Europe. Previously he helped transform CommVault's® business in Southern Europe, growing revenues over four consecutive years from $8.5M TO $25M. Powles also played a central role in building Oracle's® CRM business, catapulting it to Europe's second-highest earning company in the market. Powles has held a number of senior leadership positions at organisations such as Veritas/Symantec® and Aurum/BaaN®.
About Acronis:
Acronis is a global cyber protection company delivering the only natively integrated cybersecurity, data protection, and infrastructure management platform for managed service providers and IT departments. Acronis solutions are designed to identify, protect, detect, respond, recover and govern IT deployments, ensuring data integrity and business continuity.
A Swiss company founded in Singapore in 2003, Acronis has 15 offices worldwide and employees in 60+ countries. Acronis Cyber Platform is available in 26 languages in 150 countries and is used by over 21,000 service providers to protect over 750,000 businesses. Learn more at www.acronis.com.