Grant Bennett has been appointed as Country Manager for SUSE South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. The appointment, effective from July, will see Grant continue to support and grow strong market alignment for SUSE’s brand locally. Grant takes over from Matthew Lee who, after 7 years at the helm, moves to focus on the SUSE ISV/HSV business as Cloud and Strategic Alliances Manager.
Having been involved in the technology sector for 18 years, Grant brings a wealth of knowledge and insight into the dynamics and strategies required to ensure that SUSE South Africa continues to penetrate and drive market capitalisation in the sector. Grant has held various sales leadership positions in the industry and his background at SAP will also ensure that SUSE continues to build a strong partner and eco-system business. Grant also has experience in Corporate Leadership, Enterprise Sales, SME Sales, Tele-Sales, Sales Operations and in the Indirect Channel business.
As Country Manager, Grant will be focused on showcasing SUSE as the choice solution provider of pure Open “Open” source Linux distribution on the continent. “I want to drive greater brand awareness and solidify our presence in South Africa and the sub-Saharan African regions. I will also be focused on supporting and growing our channel and partner eco-systems through enablement and training to bring value to customers on what SUSE really has to offer. In essence, my aim is to support our customers on their journey to an entire software defined data centre,” said Bennett.
Today, thousands of businesses worldwide rely on SUSE for their mission-critical computing and IT management needs. Statistics such as Linux being the operating system behind more than 95% of the top one million domains and the fact that in excess of 80% of smartphones are running Android (based on the Linux kernel), this means that millions of people the world over are already using an iteration of Linux without even knowing it. In fact, today, more than 80% of the Fortune Global 50 and the 10 largest global automobile manufacturers and telecommunications carriers are active SUSE customers. 9 of the 10 largest aerospace companies rely on SUSE and 70% of all SAP applications running on Linux, run on SUSE.
“The next chapter in SUSE’s development will continue, and even accelerate, the momentum generated over recent years. I have a vision be the number one solution provider of pure Open “Open” source SUSE Linux solutions in Africa and I am very excited to have joined this team and look forward to not only promoting our business growth, but continuing to meet enterprise transformation demands,” said Bennett.
Edited by Neo Sesinye
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